WILD, WOOLLY & WICKED

978.1

Copyl

Hany Sinclair

WOOlly & wi

N. potter [I960]

Kansas city public library

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by HARRY SINCLAIR DRAGO

Wild,
Woolly & Wicked

The History of the Kansas Cow Towns
And the Texas Cattle Trade

Clarkson N. Potter, Inc. /Publisher

N EW YORK

Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 60-14428

Copyright 1960 by Harry Sinclair Drago
All Rights Reserved

DESIGNED BY HARVEY SATENSTEIN

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY

BOOK CRAFTSMEN ASSOCIATES, INC., NEW YORK

FiT$t Edition

IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT

(7JO .MANY MEN AND WOMEN have

pK given of their time, knowledge, and

L-J advice, as well as helpful criticism,

during the long months in which this book was being put

together that I cannot name them all; but here are some

of the many who made it possible.

Nyle Miller, secretary of the Kansas State Historical
Society; Bella Looney, Myrtle J. Cook, and Dorothy
Williams of the Oklahoma Historical Society; Bichard
M. Long, editor of the Wichita Eagle; Doyle Stiles, pub
lisher and editor of the Caldwell Messenger; Peter
Decker, writer, bibliographer, and authority on West
ern Americana; Homer C. Croy, the well-known writer
and historian; Mari Sandoz, famous for her Old Jules,
The Cattlemen, and many others books dealing with the
Western scene; Sylvester Vigilante, of the Museum of
the City of New York and the dean emeritus of the Ameri
can History Boom of the New York Public Library;
Melvin J. Nichols, collector of Civil War and Western
Americana, who opened his wonderful library to me;
Jefferson Dykes, historian, writer, and bibliographer;
Mrs. Merritt Beeson, curator of the Beeson Museum, in
Dodge City; Miss Lois Flanagan, librarian, Dodge City;

MAR 6 1981

CONTENTS

PAGE

IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT V

i. In the Beginning 1

ii. Abilene, Cow Town in the Making 12

in. The Longhorns Come North 25

iv. Jesse Chisholm and His Wagon Road 34

v. Texas Abilene 45

vi. Boom and Bust 58

vn. Tom Smith, Town Tamer 68

vin. Abilene Loses Its Marshal 77

ix. Wild Bill Takes Over 88

x. Abilene in Its Tarnished Glory 99

xi. The Longhorns Come to Ellsworth 112

xii. Death in the Afternoon 125

xm. A Day to Remember 134

xiv. Fact Versus Fiction 144

xv. Lawless Newton 155

xvi. The Death of a Cow Town 167

xvii. Wichita Takes Over 177

xvm. Longhorn Carnival 188

xix. The Roughs Are Routed 198

xx. Wyatt Earp's Wichita 210

vii

Vlll CONTENTS

PAGE

XXL The Border Queen 225

XXIL Lean Years 237

XXIIL Caldwell Comes of Age 249

xxw. The End of an Era 262

xxv. Dodge, Last of the Cow Towns 273

XXVL Dodge City, Fact and Fiction 287

xxvii. The Badge Wearers 300

xxvni. Dodge Loses Its Edge 313

xxix. Last of the Cow Towns 328

NOTES 343

BIBLIOGRAPHY 351

WTDD, WOCMLXTT AND WICKED

CHAPTER I

IN THE BEGINNING

n T NOON, on July 3, 1854, the residents,
/i\ shopkeepers, and delivery carts
uLJ across the breadth of Manhattan
Island, on 100th Street hastily took cover. Their alarm
and consternation were not due to any premature explo
sion of Fourth-of- July fireworks or the unexpected inva
sion of an enemy army. During the previous afternoon,
forty carloads of Texas Longhorn cattle had reached the
Erie Railroad yards, across the Hudson. They had been
held overnight at Bergen Hill, ferried across the river
this morning, bound for the 100th Street Cattle Market,
at Third Avenue. 1

New Yorkers were used to seeing cattle being driven
through the streets, especially along Third Avenue, all
the way down to Uncle Dan'l Drew's cattle yard at
Twenty-fourth Street. But these savage brutes were the
first Longhorns, the first wild, range cattle, to set hoof on
Manhattan. Frightened mothers clutched their offspring
and hustled them inside as the avalanche of clashing
horns bore down on them. Tom Candy Ponting, owner of
the herd, had sent two men ahead to give warning and
clear the way. There was little they could do. In the nar
row confines of the street the big steers were unmanage-

1

2 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

able ; they spread out over the sidewalks, clearing their
own way and making a clean sweep of everything in their
path. It was a sight to make strong men seek shelter in
the nearest saloon.

Tom Ponting was an experienced and prosperous cattle
trader, and had been for years. More often than not, his
operations in Illinois, Indiana, and southern Wisconsin
had been successful. He was an Englishman, from Somer
setshire, and on reaching the United States had lost no
time in establishing himself in the Midwest. He was an
adventurous man. The sharp ups and downs of a cattle
trader's life appealed to him; if you were lucky, you got
rich, or you could go broke just as quickly, which he did
several times.

The six hundred head of Longhorns that he drove
through New York City this day was one of his misad
ventures. It marked the end of a journey of some two
thousand miles. He had left Springfield, Illinois, the pre
vious year, and by way of St. Louis, Baxter Springs, in
the southeast corner of Kansas, old Fort Gibson, down
through the Nations (Oklahoma), he had crossed Red
River into Texas, buying cattle. Driving them with him,
he had circled back to Baxter Springs and ferried his herd
across the Mississippi, at Quincy, and " walked" them
across Illinois to Muncie, Indiana. From there the rest of
the long journey had been accomplished over various rail
roads, unloading and watering and feeding the stock every
night until he reached the Erie at Dunkirk, New York.

According to his figures, it had cost him a ruinous
$22.50 a head to land the Longhorns in New York. And
the six hundred were all he had left of the better than
eight hundred head with which he had left Baxter Springs.
For a year's work he had nothing. He continued to ship
cattle into New York State, principally to Buffalo and
Albany, but they were native cattle. He was through with

IN THE BEGINNING 3

Longhorns. And so was New York City. On the hoof,
that is.

Today everyone is familiar with the Chisholm, Texas
Road, the Shawnee, and the Jones and Plummer trails.
Because the belief that they were the first great trails is
so widespread, and so erroneous, it seems pertinent to go
back to the beginning.

Cattle have always been walked to market. The expres
sion " walking cattle" was in general use along the Atlan
tic Seaboard as early as 1650. When the distance between
farmstead and the sales yard was no more than a few
miles, you "walked" your cattle. When they had to be
moved great distances, anywhere from fifty to several
hundred miles, you drove them, and you were a drover.
There was something about the word drover that Texas
cowmen never liked. A sheepman with his flock was a
drover. Perhaps that is why they never used the term.
They were "trail drivers."

It is of record that in the early 1660's, Boston cattle
traders were moving out into western Massachusetts. By
1665 they were buying cattle in the Springfield-Connecti
cut River Valley country and driving them to Boston. The
various routes they used converged a few miles west of
Worcester. For the rest of the way, they followed a well-
beaten path, and it soon won a name, the Bay State Cow
Path.

In Virginia, with its large farm, or plantation, popula
tion, there was very little movement of livestock to market
until much later. By 1800 Kentucky had attained state
hood in 1792 it became a regular yearly practice for
Kentuckians to drive cattle and hogs through the Cumber-
lands and Blue Ridge Mountains into Tidewater Virginia.
In his later years, Big Ben Holladay, the Stagecoach
King, master of the Overland Express, the Pony Express,
and California shipping magnate, liked to recall his boy-

4: WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

hood days in Nicholas County, Kentucky, and how he, a
lad in his teens, with his father and brothers had trailed
their cows, hogs, and some sheep through the mountains
to Richmond, Virginia, walking every step of the way,
back and forth, and returning with their mules laden with
tea, sugar, gunpowder, and other necessities.

By the early 1820 's the rural population of Ohio,
Indiana, and Illinois had so increased that there was a
superabundance of livestock, for which the farmer had no
market. It may be supposed that they were aware that in
eastern Pennsylvania, across the Alleghenies, a market
existed. But the way was long and difficult. That they did
nothing about it for years would seem to indicate that they
considered it next to impossible to put livestock over those
rugged mountains. It was not until 1828 that John Murray
and his sons, from Lake County, Ohio, drove the first
herd over the Three Mountain Cattle Trail. 8 For thirty
years thereafter, it was the most important east-west
cattle trail in the United States.

Most of the cattle pointing for the Three Mountain
Trail entered Pennsylvania at or near Pittsburgh and
moved almost due east until they became involved in
the three mountains, Tuscarora, Kittitinny, and Blue
Mountain. From where they came out, it was compara
tively easy to get down to Shippensburg and the Cumber
land Valley road. The rest was easy. Today, though there
is no sign or monument to apprise the traveler of the
fact, the Pennsylvania Turnpike follows the route of the
almost-forgotten Three Mountain Trail, its three long
tunnels boring through the three frowning mountains over
which cattle climbed and descended for so many years.

One writer says: "It is estimated that in numbers the
cattle averaged at least 175,000 a season, aggregating
for the life of the trail well over five million/' 4 For
several reasons that figure seems unreasonably high. At

IN THE BEGINNING 5

best, the Three Mountain Trail was open not more than
eight and a half to nine months a year ; the herds were
invariably small, numbering not more than three hundred
head and very often barely half of that. If they were farm
yard cattle exclusively, which would seem to have been
the case, then the source of supply was limited and must
be considered. However, Texas cattle are included in the
writer's estimate. If Longhorns were ever driven to
Pennsylvania, and that's the only way they could have
got there, the number was so small that no written record
of it remains.

The Chisholm and other western trails were exclusively
cattle trails. Over the Three Mountain went thousands of
hogs, more thousands of sheep, hundreds of horses, and
hundreds of Kentucky-bred mules. The owner, called the
"boss," alone was mounted. He brought up the rear. His
drovers, usually two and never more than three, did most
of the work, and they walked. When the drover had left
the mountains behind him, he found himself in a settled
country. There was no such thing as free grass. A herd
had to be pastured, at so much a head, the charge fluctuat
ing between ten and fifteen cents depending on the con
dition of the grass in the feed lot, which was usually a
profitable second business of the local tavernkeeper. He
also supplied the drover and his herders with meals, beds
when requested, and such liquid refreshment as they de
sired. "With money rolling in on him, he was soon the
biggest man in town. It could not be kept a secret, and
it begat competition. In the middle '30 's taverns sprouted
like weeds until there was one every few miles. It worked
to the advantage of the drover; if he could not make
satisfactory terms at one place, he went on to the next.

Some of the taverns were deadfalls of the meanest sort,
provided with a buxom female or two whose charms were
for sale at a pittance. The real purpose of these tavern

6 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

prostitutes was to induce the unwary drover to drink
until he lost his wits. When he came out of his stupor in
the morning, he found that his money was gone. Bobberies
of this sort were far more common when the drover was
returning west, with the proceeds from the sale of his
cattle in his pocket. For the most part, the drovers and
their herders were rough, hardy men. Brawls were com
mon enough, but it is not of record that they were settled
by gunfire, as invariably was the case when the Texans
and their vast herds thundered into the cowtowns of
Kansas in the '70 's and '80 's.

Though the semi-domesticated cattle kicked up stifling
clouds of dust and sometimes broke through fences and
trampled vegetable gardens, in the main, the towns and
hamlets along the way welcomed the men who came down
the trail. They brought news of the world beyond the
mountains and were responsible in no small measure for
the prosperity of the various communities.

The owner of a herd seldom got as far as Harrisburg
without finding three or four cattle speculators waiting
for him in their two-wheeled gigs. The term "speculator,"
as applied to cattle buyers, did not have the odium at
tached to it that it has today. They came from Baltimore,
Philadelphia, and New York City to meet the Three
Mountain herds. They were accompanied by their own
drivers. As soon as a sale was made and it had to be
cash on the barrelhead; checks and other bank "paper"
were not acceptable they took charge of the cattle.
The drover turned around and headed back across the
mountains.

Among the speculators who journeyed into Pennsylvania
to buy beef cattle was that professional rustic and master
schemer, Uncle Dan'l Drew, who in the years to come was
to cross swords successfully with Commodore Vanderbilt,
and with Jim Fisk and Jay Gould, wreck the Brie Bail-

THE BEGINNING

road, and loot its treasury of millions. Dan'l Drew must
once have been young, but as Stewart Holbrook says in
The Age of the Moguls, no one ever regarded him as any
thing but old. 2 As a cattle speculator, he followed the prac
tice of having Ms drovers " salt" his cattle, the day before
reaching market, then let them drink their fill, adding
several tons to the gross weight of his herd. It brought
into the language the term " watered stock," which is still
with us. In later years, when the practice was mentioned
to embarrass Drew, he never bothered to deny it.

The railroad mileage east of the Mississippi trebled
in the decade of 18,50-60. Ohio alone put four hundred
miles of new trackage into operation. Late in February
1854 the Pennsylvania Railroad drove across the Alle-
ghenies to Pittsburgh. 5 It sounded the death knell of the
Three Mountain Trail ; cattle could not be walked over the
mountains in competition with the railroad. Early in the
summer of 1860 the last herd went over the three moun
tains. The trail, left to the weeds and the encroaching
laurel, soon became just a memory.

The five war years were at hand, and as the long
struggle between the North and the South ground on, the
cattle business languished. Armies had to be fed, but the
War Department did not propose to feed them beef.
Primarily, America was not, nor would be until the 70 's,
a red meat, beef-eating country. The North had hogs and
the corn with which to feed them. The livestock industry,
with it's eye on fat Army contracts, exploited the situa
tion. Cattle were forgotten and it became an era of pork,
sowbelly, salt pork, bacon, and (when you could get it)
ham.

It was the same in the South. Long before the war,
Texas cattle had been ferried across the lower Mississippi.
Some attempts had been made to swim it.' They had
proved too costly to be continued. When the South found

8 WILD, WOOIJLY AND "WICKED

itself in extremity, its troops in Mississippi living on
rations of parched corn, dangerous though it was, dodging
Yankee gunboats, some Texas cattle were brought across
the river and got through to General Johnson's troops at
Jackson. With the fall of Vicksburg, even that trickle of
beef stopped ; the Union forces controlled the Mississippi.

But Longhorn cattle continued to be smuggled out of
Texas; if they couldn't be sent east, they could go north.
During the 186(M>5 period, one after another, small herds
of Texas cattle reached Baxter Springs, Kansas, coming
up through the Nations (Oklahoma). Some were rustled
stock; the great majority came from Northern sympa
thizers among the Texans. It is a safe estimate that they
totaled two hundred thousand head.

They were beeves, but they couldn't be described as
"fat" cattle. But they were in demand. They were sent
on to Sedalia, Missouri, and shipped over the Missouri
Pacific to Kansas City and St. Louis to be slaughtered.

At war's end, with the lucrative Army contracts a thing
of the past, the livestock industry of the Midwest took
account of itself and turned its eyes in other directions.
Nowhere was that truer than in central Illinois. Chicago,
with its increased railroad facilities and new packing
plants, had become a convenient and lively market. Mil
waukee had Plankington and Armour and other long-
established packers, but it could no longer lay claim to
being the Midwest's most important livestock market.

The long War between the States had taught the
railroads of the North many lessons, chief of which was
that fast, cheap transportation of passengers and freight
was not possible over a network of short, connecting, and
independently owned roads. The Central Railway of New
Jersey had boldly advertised "through" expresses from
New York to Chicago, and established a running time of
thirty-six hours, "without change" "three hours less

IN THE BEGINNING 9

than the Northern Lines." To accomplish that feat, it
used its own rails to Easton, Pennsylvania; the Lehigh
Valley to Allentown; the East Pennsylvania to Beading;
the Lebanon Valley Railroad to Harrisburg, and the
Pennsylvania Central to Pittsburgh, where the traveler
took the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway,
this last jointly owned by the Ohio and Pennsylvania
and the Ohio and Indiana Railway. The remedy was
amalgamation, whether by mutual agreement or forced,
and it was often the latter. "Systems" began to emerge
as the weaker roads lost their corporate identity.

Then, as now, the revenue from its freight tonnage was
more important to a railroad than the returns from its
passenger traffic. Since more freight meant greater
profits, it occurred to someone it could have been that
shrewd operator, Cornelius Vanderbilt; over the Lake
Shore and Michigan Southern, and the Michigan Central,
both subsidiaries of his New York Central, he had a
double-barreled trunk line into Chicago that the carriers
had a rich plum in their hands if they could deliver the
meat and meat products of the Midwest to their Eastern
terminals and be sure they would reach their destination
unspoiled. The primitive methods then in use wouldn't
do it ; just icing an ordinary boxcar and sealing it was not
enough. Special cars would have to be built and insulated
with thick walls of sawdust, much as an icehouse was
insulated.

That was done, and, though what resulted was crude, it
was the beginning from which today's modern "reefers"
came. The primitive refrigerator cars served their pur
pose. "Chicago beef" took its place on the menu of the
best New York restaurants, along with ' * Maine Lobsters ' '
and "Long Island Duck." The price of beeves, and stock
cattle as well, began to go skyward, for farmers, seeing
the way the market was moving, were quick to increase

10 WELD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

the size of their herds. In Illinois livestock men couldn't
supply the demand.

Some idea of the scope of the trade can be gained from
Joseph GL McCoy, the youngest of the three brothers
doing business under the firm name of McCoy Brothers,
in Springfield and in Sangamon County. He says: "One
thousand head of native cattle costing from $80 to $140
per head, was not an unusual week's shipment. "When it
is remembered that three shipments were on the road at
the same time during all the season, it will be seen that
their [the brothers'] resources, financially, were not
limited." They were shipping mules, sheep, and hogs as
well.

Joseph G. McCoy is a name to remember, for he was
destined to go down in history as the creator and father
of the Texas cattle trade.

At the time, Joe McCoy was a tall, rather gawky
young man, not yet thirty, of a rather religious bent,
quiet and retiring, but, as events were to prove, pos
sessed of a forceful nature, a man who could, when occa
sion demanded, become an aggressive and compelling
spellbinder. Of himself and his brothers, he says :

"All three of [us] were of [a] sanguine, impetuous
speculative temperament ; just such dispositions as always
look most upon the bright side of the picture and never
feel inclined to look at the dangers or hazard of a venture,
but take it for granted that all will end well that looks
well in the beginning." 6

If the above could have been said of the brothers
collectively, it could be said with particular truthfulness
of the youngest of them. Ambitious, energetic, quick
to scent out and untiring to follow a speculation, fully
possessed with an earnest desire to do something that
would alike benefit humanity as well as himself; some
thing that, when life's rugged battles were over, could

IN THE BEGINNING 11

be pointed to as evidence that he had lived to some good
purpose and that the world, or a portion thereof, was
benefited by his having lived.

"This young man [he does not use the personal pro
noun] conceived the idea of opening up an outlet for
Texan cattle. Being impressed with a knowledge of the
number of cattle in Texas and the difficulties of getting
them to market by the routes and means then in use, and
realizing the great disparity of Texas values and North
ern prices of cattle, he set himself to ... studying to hit
upon some plan whereby these great extremes would be
equalized. The longer the idea of this enterprise was
harbored by the young Illinois cattle shipper, the more
determined he became ... to carry it out."

It was a dream, a decision, that was to change the
face, if not the map, of Kansas ; rescue Jesse Chisholm
and the Chisholm Trail from oblivion; put millions of
dollars in the pockets of Texas cattlemen ; turn such un
heard of places as Abilene, Ellsworth, Newton, Wichita,
Caldwell, Hays City (today's Hays), Great Bend, and
Dodge City into hell-roaring, " bibulous Babylons" where
thugs and gun fighters, killers, -gamblers, and prostitutes
passed in endless review, with the staccato bark of the
six-gun for a theme song, and where birth was given to
the myths and legends surrounding such overpublicized
"peace" officers as the Mastersons and the Earps.

CHAPTER BE

ABILENE, COW TOWN
IN THE MAKING

f 1HERE WAS very little "hard" money
nrleft in Texas at the end of the war.
U There were millions of Longhorns
running wild on the plains and in the brush country of
South Texas, many unbranded and of doubtful owner
ship. They were next to worthless. Thousands were killed,
but only for the hides and tallow. For years the principal
cargo of vessels sailing from the Texas ports of
Indianola, Corpus Christi, Sabine Pass, and others was
hides. Instead of making a noticeable dent in the vast
herds, it is doubtful that it even kept abreast of the
natural increase taking place.

At best, a cowhide brought three dollars and often less.
As for markets for the animals themselves, the only ones
available were New Orleans and Mobile. They were so
pitifully small that they were easily glutted. Texas cattle
had been driven to California in the gold excitement of '49
but by 1853 the Spanish cattle of Southern California had
largely taken over the market.

An idea of the size of the Longhorn population of Texas
may be gleaned from the tax records of 1867, which
account for six million. Since it can be taken for granted

12

ABILENE, COW TOWN IN THE MAKING 13

that no man owning ten thousand head or more (and
many did) would report for tax purposes the full extent
of his holdings, it may be presumed that the gross figure
of cattle on the hoof totaled nearer ten million than six.

Texas stockmen tried to find an outlet by sending herds
across Eed River at Colbert's Ferry and up through the
Nations to Baxter Springs, Kansas, over what first was
known as the Shawnee Trail and later as the Texas Trail
or Texas Road as they had done in the middle '50 ? s.
This was the route by which the mail went and the
Sawyer and Ficklin stagecoaches. "When the Missouri,
Kansas and Texas Railroad built down through Okla
homa, it paralleled the Texas Road a great part of the
way.

With typical postwar bitterness, the Dallas Herald
commented caustically : ' ' Two thousand head went north
today to feed our abolition neighbors. We hope a Southern
diet may agree with their delicate stomaehs."

The so-called ''civilized tribes " in the Nations, espe
cially the Cherokees and Creeks, proved how civilized
they had become by demanding toll of the Texans for the
privilege of driving the herds through their lands. It
had to be paid in cattle. But as the Texans neared the
Missouri-Kansas line, their troubles really began. The
term " hijacking " was not then in use, but its present-day
connotation best describes what they encountered. They
were met by organized bands of armed border ruffians,
many of whom had ridden with QuantrilPs guerrillas,
who either ran off the cattle or demanded to be paid for
permitting them to go through. A Texas outfit, seeing
itself outnumbered ten to one, and having little that re
sembled money, could do nothing but stand aside and
see fifty to a hundred head of Longhorns cut out and
driven off.

These border gangs had another argument running

14 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

for them. Missouri had a law on the books, passed in
1861, forbidding the importing of diseased cattle, which
meant Texas cattle. With the Longhorns beginning to
show up again, the counties through which the cattle
would have to pass to reach the railroad at Sedali# rose
up in arms. Teeth were put in the old law; railroads
were forbidden to transport Texas cattle within the state.
All this was a reflection of the epidemics that had oc
curred in 1855 and again in 1856, when the first Texas
cattle were driven into Missouri. It came to be known
locally as the "Fever War/' This was the country's first
bout with tick (Spanish or Texas) fever. The south
western Missouri counties had put an embargo on the
introduction of Texas cattle. Enforcement was too costly
to be effective; inspectors could and were bribed.
Mysteriously, Texas cattle had reached Sedalia.

This was different ; the state of Missouri was having
a try at it this time. It didn't know what it was fighting.
No one did. But of one thing the Missouri farmer was
sure; where the Longhorn passed or was pastured, na
tive shorthorn cattle took sick and died. Whatever the
cause, and many wild and fallacious arguments were ad
vanced, the villain was definitely the Texas Longhorn.
Thirty-five years were to pass before the U. S. Depart
ment of Animal Husbandry established that the tick, to
which Texas cattle were immune, was the culprit; it
dropped off the leg of a Longhorn and waited to crawl
up the leg of an unsuspecting cow, lay its eggs, and be on
the way to infecting a whole herd.

Quaintly, the Missouri law read: " Every afflicted
county shall appoint three discreet and competent persons
to examine all Texas cattle." They were looking for the
sick ones, but since a Longhorn was not bothered by the
ticks it carried, few were found that were suspect.

With Missouri closed to them, the Texans turned west

ABILENE, COW TOWN IN THE MAKING 15

and trailed north through eastern Kansas and reached
the Hannibal and St. Joe Railroad. Hungry for business,
the financially shaky Hannibal and St. Joe accepted the
Longhorns and hustled them across Missouri to Quincy,
Illinois. But that avenue of escape was closed almost as
soon as they had opened it, and not more than twenty
thousand head got through to Milwaukee and Chicago.

Kansas Territory had entered the Union as a state
in 1861. With the support of the farmers of the eastern
counties, who were as much opposed to having their crops
trampled and fences knocked down by Texas cattle as they
were fearful of Spanish fever, it promptly passed an
"anti-Texas cattle law." Kansas was soon aflame with
border warfare, and the law became a dead letter. In
1865 it was repealed. In its place came a new law, with
even stricter prohibitions. But it applied only to the east
ern counties. "West of the first guide meridian west of the
sixth principal meridian" all restrictions were lifted.
It cut the state in two about sixty miles west of Topeka.
By common consent everything west of Topeka was dis
missed as "no-good" country, semi-arid, sparsely popu
lated, and, it was generally agreed, would never amount
to anything. There were a few straggling settlements.
Salina, making a brave effort to establish itself as a farm
ing community, was the most important. And there was
the chain of Army posts, beginning with Fort Eiley,
their need as protection against Indian uprisings nearing
the end.

That was the situation in the spring of 1865. Changes
were coming, and coming quickly. After three years of
waiting, life was to be pumped in the U.S. Act of 1862,
to construct a railroad and telegraph line from the Mis
souri River to the Pacific Ocean. Briefly, three companies
were formed to build it: the Union Pacific, the Central
Pacific, and the Kansas Pacific (or Union Pacific, Eastern

16 WILD, WOO!LLY AND WICKED

Division, as the Kansas Pacific was originally known),
with tremendous federal land grants to speed construc
tion.

Though the U.P., Eastern Division, did not change its
corporate name until May 31, 1868, it was popularly
known as such almost from the beginning, and we shall
so identify it.

The Kansas Pacific, with Leavenworth its announced
eastern terminal, was to cross the state to Denver, turn
north, and connect with the parent Union Pacific at
Cheyenne. Soon after dirt began to fly, it absorbed the
infant Leavenworth, Pawnee and Western and headed
west in earnest. With state and federal aid assured, and
an additional plum of a million acres in land grants
awaiting it if it reached the Colorado line in three years,
it was no "paper" railroad, as so many were; this one
would be built. It headed up the Kansas River Valley to
what is now Manhattan, turned west up the Smoky Hill,
and was on its way.

No one watched the progress of the Kansas Pacific
with keener interest than Joseph McCoy. Obsessed with
the idea of opening an outlet for Texas cattle, he had
been considering several plans, trying to determine, he
says, "whether the Western prairies or the Southern
rivers would be the better place to establish the proposed
depot. 77 1 In speaking of "Southern rivers " he obviously
was referring to the Mississippi, at the mouth of one of
its important western tributaries. That he could have
given serious consideration to such a course seems doubt
ful, for he makes no further mention of it after journey
ing to Kansas City and into Kansas. He found the Kansas
Pacific in operation, after a fashion, as far west as Junc
tion City.

To quote him further: "Junction City was visited and
a proposition made to one of the leading business men

ABILENE, COW TOWN IN THE MAKING 17

to ''purchase of him a tract of land sufficiently large to
build a stock yard and such other facilities as were
necessary for cattle shipping, but an exorbitant price was
asked, in fact a flat refusal to sell at any price (for such
a purpose) was the final answer."

But, fully decided by now to establish a market on the
prairies, he returned to St. Louis to consult the Kansas
Pacific officials about rates of freight and the necessary
installations. The picture he presents of himself, in his
worn clothes and hat-in-hand manner was hardly calcu
lated to inspire confidence in the minds of the president
and board members of the railroad, especially in one so
young. However, he outlined his project in detail, stating
the reasons for his confidence in its success, giving them
a modest estimate of the amount of freight it would pro
duce and appealing for such consideration as the im
portance of the proposed enterprise deserved.

He was told that they knew of no reason why such a
thing might not be done, that freight going east was just
what they wanted, and if anyone would risk his money
in the venture the railroad company would stand by him,
and afford such cars, switches, and siding as would be
needed. If successful, the promotors would be liberally
paid. But, having no faith in the project, they would not
risk a dollar of railroad money.

Taking the word for the deed, McCoy was encouraged
by this pledge of co-operation. Looking back, years later,
he could say truthfully that the Kansas Pacific repudiated
every promise it gave him.

He fared much worse when he visited the president of
the Missouri Pacific and tried to gain favorable freight
rates between the Kansas line and St. Louis. He was
told that he had no cattle and was not likely to have any;
that he was interested in freight rates for purely specu
lative purposes, and he was ordered to remove himself

18 WILD, WOOLLY A3SD WICKED

from the office and make it Ms business not to return.
Nonplused and chagrined but not discouraged, he saw
the general freight agent of the Hannibal and St. Joe
Eailroad and in less than twelve hours had a contract
guaranteeing very satisfactory rates between the Missouri
Eiver and Quincy and into Chicago.

After a quick trip to Illinois to arrange business matters
with his brothers, he was back in Kansas to find a point
appropriate for holding, handling, and shipping cattle.
The Kansas Pacific had reached Abilene in March.
Putting up a plank signpost for a depot, it had gone on
and was reaching for Salina. On horseback he followed
the tracks west from Junction City, looking for a likely
spot but finding none until he reached Solomon City,
near which an excellent site for stockyards took his eye ;
but on conferring with several leading citizens it was
made painfully clear to him that Solomon City regarded
with horror the idea of turning the town over to Texas
cattle and Texas cowboys. He found Salina even more
strongly opposed to such a program. It left him nothing
to do but turn back to Abilene, a mere dot on the prairies.
Abilene would stand for anything.

Then, as now, it was the county seat of Dickinson
County, a primitive political subdivision without jail or
courthouse, supported by a handful of taxpayers. In
McCoy's words : "Abilene in 1867 was a very small, dead
place, consisting of about one dozen log huts, low, small
rude affairs, four-fifths of which were covered with dirt
for roofing; indeed, but one shingle roof could be seen
in the whole city. The business of the burg was conducted
in two small rooms, mere log huts, and, of course, the
inevitable saloon also in a log hut . . ." 2

For what he required Abilene had its advantages. The
country was almost completely unsettled, well watered,
with excellent grass, and nearly the entire surrounding

ABILENE, COW TOWN IN THE MAKING 19

area well adapted for holding cattle. The succeeding years
proved that no better point could have been selected.

A tract of land adjoining the town to the east was
purchased. Employing the services of Tim Hersey, a
civil engineer residing in Abilene, and by all accounts its
leading citizen, the locations of the stockyards, office, and
a large hotel were staked off. Land was cheap, and Mc
Coy also bought acreage on the north side of town, where
he built his home.

Tim Hersey 's name will reappear in this narrative. He
served McCoy in various ways. A word or two about him
and his wife seems appropriate, as well as a good way of
proving that from the beginning there were two
Abilenes ; one belonging to the God-fearing pioneers who
established it, and the other to the Texans who overran
the place. Mud Creek cut through the village on its way
south to the Smoky Hill Eiver, a mile away. "On the
creek's west bank you saw the Hersey place, 7 ' says
Stuart Henry, 3 who spent his boyhood years in Abilene.
It was the house with the shingled roof that McCoy men
tioned. "And just west of it stood the small stone . . .
Government stable. It had been the first relay station west
of Fort Biley for the military and passenger service (the
Butterfield Overland Dispatch between Atchison and
Denver). This stable, already abandoned, remained for
many years.

"Tim was hamstrung as to religion, but Mrs, Hersey
was a devout Methodist. I recall that one Sunday evening
in 1868 our family walked across the creek railroad
bridge to the Hersey home for a Bible reading. Mrs.
Hersey had named the village Abilene . . . She took it
from Luke, third chapter, first verse 'tetrarch of
Abilene.' This was always understood in Abilene to be
the fact." 4 In a footnote Henry mentions that in the
Kansas State Historical Collections (Vol. VII, p. 475)

20 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

there is an unsupported statement that the name was
suggested to C. H. Thompson by a Findlay Patterson of
Pennsylvania. Fortunately Mrs. Hersey's claim to that
distinction survives.

McCoy recounts the difficulties he faced before any
building could be done. There was nothing on the ground;
everything had to be brought in, including some skilled
labor. The pine lumber needed came all the way from
Hannibal, Missouri ; the hardwood from Lenape, Kansas.
"In sixty days from July 1st, a shipping yard, that
would accommodate three thousand cattle, a large pair of
Fairbanks scales, a barn and an office were completed,
and a good three-story hotel well on the way toward com
pletion. When it is remembered that this was accom
plished in so short a time ... it will be seen that energy
and a determined will were at work. ' ' 5

Aside from one or two mild scares eastern Kansas was
no longer troubled by Indians. In the central and western
parts of the state and in No Man's Land (the Oklahoma
Panhandle) and all over the Texas Panhandle, the
Comanches and Cheyennes, Kiowas and Arapahoes, in
censed over the wholesale slaughtering of the buffalo,
were raiding and murdering. "The buffalo was as im
portant to them as the camel was to the Arab." 6 Its
meat was his food ; its shaggy covering his bed and pro
tection against the icy blasts of winter ; with its tanned
hide stretched over tepee poles it supplied the covering
for his home,

A buffalo robe would fetch from three to seven dollars,
depending on the quality. The white hunter's interest in
the animal began and ended there. He might save the
tongue or some tidbit ; the rest was left to rot or provide
a feast for the wolves and coyotes. These robe hunters
should not be confused with the hide hunters who were
to come a few years later, after tanners found a way of

ABILENE, COW TOWN IN THE MAKING 21

turning a buffalo hide into commercially acceptable
leather. What had gone before was as nothing compared
to the wanton butchery of the hide hunters that all but
reduced the buffalo to extinction.

Governor Samuel J. Crawford, of Kansas, knowing that
the continuing Indian depredations were in retaliation for
the wholesale slaughtering of buffalo, and appreciating
that the Indians had some justification for making war,
appealed to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, in
Washington, to offer the hunting tribes, the Kiowas,
Comanches, Cheyennes (the Southern Cheyennes and not
to be confused with the Northern tribe of that name)
and the Arapahoes, new treaties and a realignment of
their lands as well as a review of their rights that would
bring hostilities to an end.

Commissioner Taylor responded by naming a peace
commission and asking the military to arrange a meeting
with the hostiles. Though General Hancock got the chiefs
to accept the Government's invitation to the meeting, he
was transferred from the Department of the Missouri at
the last minute and did not attend. He wasn't missed, for
Taylor and a six-man commission, escorted by troops
and accompanied by Generals Sherman, Terry, Harney,
Angur and Governor Crawford, arrived in force at the
agreed-on meeting place on Medicine Lodge Creek, in
southern Barber County, in early October, With them they
brought a mountain of gifts.

The Indians put in a tardy appearance and days passed
before they were all there. Crawford later estimated their
number at no less than five thousand, men, women, and
children.

The commissioners were prepared to be generous.
They signed a treaty with the Kiowas, Comanches, and
Apaches, and a week later with the Cheyennes and
Arapahoes, giving the first three a large reservation on

22 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

the Bed River in Indian Territory, and the Cheyennes
and Arapahoes several million acres in the Cherokee
Outlet (see Chapter XXI), in exchange for lands they
claimed in Kansas and Colorado. They also received a
promise that hereafter white buffalo hunters would be
barred from the plains south of the Arkansas River. In
addition, they were given amnesty for their depredations
of the past summer. The chiefs signed and, loaded down
with presents, went their way.

In his statement Governor Crawford does not mention
that Chief Quanah Parker and his Quahada Comanches
boycotted the meeting by not appearing. It had an
ominous significance, for the Quahada Comanches were
the spearhead of Indian resistance.

Neither side expected the promises made the other to
be fulfilled. And they weren't. As soon as the hide hunt
ers discovered th$t they could make up to a hundred
dollars a day, no law or governmental promise could keep
them north of the Arkansas. By twos and threes, and then
by the score, they flocked into the forbidden Texas Pan
handle. Not even the bloody battle at Adobe Walls, in
1874, could stop them. When they quit, it was because
they had run out of buffaloes.

Proof that the big get-together at Medicine Lodge
Creek had accomplished nothing came in July of the fol
lowing summer. Several hundred Cheyenne warriors went
up the Pawnee Fork of the Arkansas and struck north and
across the Saline River and reached the Solomon River
Valley, where they began pillaging and scalping. West
of Fort Dodge a number of wagon trains were attacked
on the Santa Fe Trail, a score of men killed. At Cimarron
Crossing a train carrying seventy-five thousand pounds
of wool was stopped by a band of Arapahoes. The
freighters fought them off until their ammunition was
exhausted. Saving what stock they could, they abandoned

ABILENE, COW TOWN IN THE MAKING 23

the wagons, which with their contents were burned by the
Indians.

The military from Forts Harker, Hayes, Wallace, Dodge
in Kansas, and Fort Lyon, across the line in Colorado,
took the field. The Indians soon discovered that in the
completed Kansas Pacific Eailroad the Army had a new
weapon that could be used against them. Troops could be
shuttled back and forth faster than the hardiest Indian
ponies could run. The hostiles were rounded up and the
ringleaders sentenced to prison terms. The campaign of
'68 broke the power of the plains tribes and Kansas was
not to have another Indian scare until Dull Knife and
Little Wolf and the Northern Cheyennes broke away
from their reservation at Fort Eeno, Oklahoma, down
in the Nations in 1878, and fought their way across
Kansas and Nebraska in a epical running battle to get
back to their homeland among the yellow pines and high
hills of the Tongue Eiver country in Montana, from which
the Government had removed them following the roundup
of hostiles after the Ouster fight.

The full story of the flight of the Northern Cheyennes
across Kansas and Nebraska from the humid, low-lying
reservation at Fort Eeno, where in less than two years
half their number had been swept away by fever, does
not come within the scope of this narrative. Edgar
Beecher Bronson has told it in detail in his Reminiscences
of a Ranchman.

Perhaps the tribute paid them by Teddy Blue Abbott,
the cowboy friend of Charlie Eussell, the great painter
they were two of a kind will not be amiss : ' * They fought
their way clear up from Indian Territory to Tongue Eiver
in Montana, because they was dying like flies down there,
dying for home. There was three hundred Indians, and
less than a hundred of them was warriors, the rest women
and old men and children. And with thirteen thousand

24 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

troops out against them they fought their way across
three railroads and five lines of defense, and they
whipped everything they come to. And by God, half of
them made it up here to Montana, and for a wonder they
was allowed to stay. I tell you they was the bravest
Indians on the plains the Northern Cheyennes." 7

CHAPTER HI

THE LONGHORNS COME NORTH

0NE OF the myths surrounding the be
ginning of the Texas cattle trade has
it that, while Joseph McCoy's oper
ations were going forward, he went into southern Kansas
and Indian Territory to drum up business for his market,
and that he engaged Jesse Chisholm to spread the word.
A recent motion picture showed McCoy meeting with
Chisholm, and with the latter 's help getting the first trail
herd started for Abilene. There is not the slightest evi
dence that the two men ever met. Nor can the tale that
McCoy went downstate to the Arkansas, Little Arkansas,
and the Salt Fork be substantiated. The Salt Fork of the
Arkansas was still buffalo country.

These misconceptions undoubtedly arose from the fact
that, in 1867, McCoy sent "William Sugg, a frontiersman,
into Indian Territory in the hope that he might find some
cattle along the Canadian and induce the owners to drive
to Abilene. Sugg met three Northern men in the Nations,
Smith, McCord, and Chandler, who had purchased a herd
of Longhorns driven from Texas by a man named Thomp
son. That became the first herd to reach Abilene. Other
herds arrived before the season ended (1867) and it
seems reasonable to believe that it resulted from Sugg's

25

26 WILD, WOOIXY A]STD WICKED

activities. McCoy was impressed, and in the early spring
of 1868 he sent Sugg, Colonel Hitt, an old friend of
Springfield, Illinois, and Charles F. Gross into Texas to
acquaint Lone Star cowmen with the opportunity un
folding at Abilene, where their cattle could be sold, or
shipped to other markets. He promised them fair play
with good grass and water all the way, and an average
price of fifteen dollars a head for beef cattle in market
able condition.

The three men were well acquainted with the Texan
ranges. They were gone for months and were so success
ful that Gross, in a letter published in the Abilene Daily
Reflector, in 1925, was moved to say :

"I was responsible mainly for the starting of the
cattle trade in Abilene. At least I feel that I was. This
survey took us through the heart of Texas, and the cattle
ranges. We saw cattle, wild horses and buffalo galore.
Before I knew anything of his ( McCoy *s) plans he had
them well on the way. I then found I was included in the
game to at first go down to Texas with Col. Hitt ... to
spread the deal there . . . This is the way I came to help
stake the cattle trail to Abilene and thereafter to be con
nected with the McCoys (Joseph G. and his brother J. P.
who, though older, was the junior partner) so intimately
and know all the moves in building up the trade there."

Gross does not mention Bill Sugg, but J. B. Edwards,
the most reliable of Abilene ? s early historians, says that
two men accompanied Colonel Hitt. Gross was an old man
at the time of this letter and can be excused for taking
more credit to himself than was his due when he says that
he helped to stake out the trail to Abilene. As will be
shown, he had nothing to do with it.

To a man of his imagination and driving energy, it is
doubtful that it occurred to Joe McCoy in the early sum
mer of '67 that he was overstepping himself and that his

THE LONGHORNS COME ITOETH 27

dreams were bordering on the grandiose. He had already
discovered that he was going to get little of the promised
co-operation from the Kansas Pacific. They gave him a
twenty-car siding, altogether inadequate. The summer was
almost gone before he prevailed on the company to in
crease it to a capacity of a hundred cars. In its peak
years Abilene had three miles of siding. Loading as
many as three thousand head a day became a common
place.

At Leavenworth the company did nothing about in
stalling the necessary transfer and feed yards until he
had the plans made at his expense and hired and paid a
man to superintend their construction.

He was spending thousands of dollars, and the three-
story hotel of a hundred twenty rooms he was building
was taking a good share of it. This was to be the famous
Drovers' Cottage. He could have given it a name more
to the liking of Texas men, but, being from Illinois, which
in that day was considered "East," he continued to use
the word.

As he visualized it, it was to be the finest hotel on the
plains, stocked with imported wines and liquor, the
choicest Havana cigars, and food equal to the best to
be found in St. Louis. It was to be furnished in style, and
managed by an experienced hotel man. It was a dream
that was to be realized. In the meantime everything was
going out and nothing coming in. He doesn't say so, but
it could have been his need of money that took him on a
quick trip back to Springfield. If so, he got it. Equally
fortuitous for Kansas was his becoming acquainted with
Theodore C. Henry, a young man of twenty-six Stuart
Henry's elder brother, studying law in Springfield.

Apparently a strong friendship sprang up between
them at once. Farm-raised, they had much in common.
Both were filled with imagination and ambition, cautious

28 WILD, WOOLLY A3SD WICKED

in many ways, but ready to discount the possibility of
failure and pursue an idea to its conclusion, once they
had embraced it. McCoy spoke glowingly of the oppor
tunities he saw opening up in Kansas. Land was cheap.
People were sure to follow the railroad into almost virgin
country. Speculating in land values would net a snug
fortune in a few years. Seeing that Henry was interested,
he soon persuaded him to give up the law, gather up what
money he could, and come west with him. That fall, T.C.,
as he soon came to be known, stepped off a train in
Abilene. He had made a momentous decision. Ten years
later he was being hailed as the " Wheat King of
Kansas. "

The season was far gone when McCoy received word
that the herd owned by Smith, McCord, and Chandler,
which Bill Sugg had found down on the Canadian, had
crossed the line into Kansas and was on its way to
Abilene. He was further pleased to learn that word of
the market opening there had seeped into North Texas
and that other herds were driving north. With the flare
of showmanship that he exhibited on numerous occasions,
he arranged an excursion of stockmen, dealers, and buy
ers from Springfield to celebrate the arrival of the first
herd. The Drovers' Cottage wouldn't be available for
months, but he had several large tents set up in which
to entertain, wine, and dine his guests.

Though it had been such a wet year that the grass had
turned soft and rank and range cattle had not done well
on it, the fifteen hundred head of Longhorns that reached
Abilene were in fairly good condition. A sale was effected,
and early on the morning following the banquet,
September 5, "the iron horse was darting down the Kaw
Valley with the first trainload of cattle that ever passed
over the Kansas Pacific Eailroad, the precursor to many
thousands destined to follow/ 7 1

THE LOIsTGHOENS COME NORTH 29

Two thousand Longhorns belonging to Colonel 0. W.
Wheeler and his partners, Wilson and Hicks, Cali-
fornians, and en route to the Pacific Coast, were within
thirty miles of Abilene, where they were being held to
recuperate. When the owners learned that they could dis
pose of their cattle as profitably in Kansas as in Cali
fornia, they drove into Abilene. McCoy says: "It was
really the first herd that came up from Texas, and broke
the trail, followed by the other herds. ' ' 2

Though he describes most of the cattle that reached
Abilene that year as " unfit to go to market/' they were
sold to shippers who, in some cases, had to dispose of
them at a loss. The rains had ruined the corn crop in the
Midwest, making it unprofitable to fatten cattle. In the
East, the story that Texas cattle were diseased and not
fit to eat was widely circulated by parties having a
selfish interest in keeping them off the market. But the
canard soon died ; the public soon learned that fat Texas
beef was as good as any other and much cheaper.

When the season was over, thirty five thousand head
of cattle had been shipped from Abilene. Of the con
siderably more than a thousand cars that carried them
away, all but seventeen went over the Hannibal and St.
Joe ; the Missouri Pacific got the rest.

With the success of the venture now an assured fact,
an agent of the Missouri Pacific appeared in Abilene to
solicit business. McCoy had not forgotten how he had been
received by the president of the road that spring, in St.
Louis. He no longer needed the Missouri Pacific, and he
tells with glee how he informed the agent that "it just
occurred to him that he had no cattle for his road, never
had, and there was no evidence that he ever would have,
and would he please say so to his President."

Though he speaks of the windup of the '67 season as
being "unsatisfactory," due to too much rains, nightly

30 WILD, WOOLLY ASTD WICKED

stampeding, and the resultant poor condition of the cattle
when brought in to be shipped, he was riding high. And
it was only the beginning. Before he was through, he
was to see upwards of a million head of Longhorns
proddfed into the stock cars of the Kansas Pacific, Even
in that abbreviated season of '67 half a million Yankee
dollars changed hands in Abilene. A few months ago
there had been nothing there but the empty prairie and
a score of log huts. It made it all the more remarkable.
Most of the money was carried back to Texas, where the
news spread like wildfire in the greatest word-of-mouth
advertising campaign a cattle market ever enjoyed. Only
the cowboys were disgruntled. There was no fun in
Abilene no girls, no dance halls, no games of chance,
just third-rate whiskey.

But the tales sweeping Texas were heard in other
quarters, in Kansas City, St. Louis, Memphis, and were
of particular interest to the migratory underworld of
thugs and sharpers, gamblers and prostitutes that was
always ready to move in where the pickings promised to
be rich.

Almost unnoticed, Abilene was growing. It now had a
population of a hundred adults. New buildings were going
up. T. C. Henry began building a frame house, to have
plastered walls, the first in town. He was doing well and
it had become a familiar sight to see him driving
prospective clients over the prairies. Stores were built on
what had the semblance of becoming a business street.
It had no name, but it was soon to win one of horrendous
reputation Texas Street. Into the tiny building housing
the post office were crowded the courtroom and office of
the register of deeds.

McCoy pushed work on the Drovers' Cottage. It was
finished and furnished that fall, but not opened until just
before the season of 1868 began. He was casting about

THE LOSTGHOBlSrS COME NORTH 31

for the right person to put in charge, when he was advised
to contact J. W. Gore, the steward of the St. Nicholas
Hotel in St. Louis. He met Gore and his wife, Louisa, early
in '68 in the Mound City and they made so favorable an
impression that he engaged them at once. After spending
several days making a list of the thousand and one items,
everything from basic flour and coffee to fancy canned
Baltimore oysters and an assortment of fine French wines
and brandies and the best Kentucky bourbon, the Gores
went on a buying spree that lasted for a month. Several
carloads of supplies were shipped to the Cottage. There
was no trained help there, so a staff had to be recruited in
St. Louis. It took time, and it was early June before the
Gores arrived in Abilene.

Though McCoy made many mistakes in his business
dealings, ending up with nothing, he made no mistake in
hiring Lou Gore, for she, rather than her husband, became
the guiding genius of the Drovers' Cottage, respected and
admired by the whole fraternity of cattlemen and winning
for the Cottage a reputation that went unrivaled until the
last herd rumbled into Abilene.

In early April the town got its first warning of what
'68 was to bring. Every train from the east brought little
groups of hard-faced men, saloonkeepers and gamblers,
pimps, brothel keepers, and assorted undesirables. Piles
of building supplies were deposited beside the Kansas
Pacific tracks. Cheek by jowl on the street where 'the Seely
store and the post office were located, flimsy structures
began to take shape. Carpenters could command their own
wages. Day and night, Sundays included, the sawing and
hammering went on.

Jake Karatof sky, the enterprising and peripatetic Rus
sian Jew, put together his Great Western general store.
The names that appeared on the saloons and shops had
a strong Texan flavor. It was small wonder that the street

32 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

was dubbed Texas Street, The wild life that centered on
it never extended more than two blocks in an east-west
direction, but in between, a side street, which was a con
tinuation of the road that led to the stockyards, cut in at
right angles from the south and for half a block it was
the heart of Texas Abilene. Midway of the short half
block the Alamo Saloon was erected. It could be called
ornate, the time and place considered. In the compara
tively short life of Abilene as a cow town, its elegance
and glitter were never surpassed.

Beyond the Alamo, to the south, and in back of the
saloons, a number of ten-by-twelve cribs were knocked
together, crude, unpainted shanties, in which the little
army of harlots, converging on Abilene from as far away
as New Orleans, were to ply their ancient trade. They soon
outgrew their cramped quarters and the red-light district
was moved north of town, where a number of one-story
frame houses of twenty to twenty-five rooms were built.
This was uncomfortably near the McCoy residence. But
he had sown the whirlwind and recognized such mani
festations as inevitable. Floyd Streeter says that the dis
trict was suppressed in 1870. " After McCoy became
Mayor in the spring of '71, a tract of land at the east
edge of town was procured for these houses. The district
was then dubbed i McCoy's Addition' by some; * Devil's
Half -acre' by others." 8

McCoy says that other Kansas towns were now anxious
to garner the Texas cattle trade. He doesn't identify
them, but very likely they were Junction City and Ells
worth. To counteract such overtures, he began a sys
tematic campaign of letter writing and newspaper ad
vertising in Texas, extolling the advantages cattlemen
would find at Abilene. He didn't stop there. Engaging
Tim Hersey to survey a direct route from Abilene across
the Newton Prairies to a point several miles west of

THE LONGHORNS COME NORTH 33

where the Little Arkansas flows into the Arkansas River.
(It was there that the town of Wichita was to rise a few
years later.)

Hersey set out with a well-provisioned party of flag
men and laborers, his instructions being to throw up
high mounds of earth at intervals of a mile, each sur
mounted with the Lone Star flag of Texas. It was not
until after they crossed the Arkansas that the Texans
had had trouble finding the way to Abilene. Having
nothing but the North Star to guide them, they had
wandered all over the prairies.

Driving up through the Nations, they had had no
difficulty, after reaching the Washita, where they found
a wagon road that a half-breed Cherokee Indian named
Jesse Chisholm had blazed. It brought them all the way
across the line into Kansas.

CHAPTER IV

JESSE CHISHOLM AND
HIS WAGON ROAD

["""lOR SOME years now, thanks to tele-
] revision, the glamorized, historic Chis-
LJ holm Trail has "been running through
our living rooms. It has become a household name. Indeed,
it is safe to say that it is today of greater interest
to millions of Americans than the two much longer and
far more important trails, the Santa Fe and the Oregon.
Historically its life was short, its importance beginning
in 1867 and ending in 1875. But song and story, and end
less controversy regarding its beginnings and the man
whose name it bears, have kept it alive.

In looking back it is difficult to understand the confusion
that began to surround it less than fifty years after its use
fulness ended and it became just a memory in the minds
of old-time trail drivers and cowboys who, as young men,
had followed it north to the Kansas cow towns and back
to Texas. The members of the Old Time Trail Drivers'
Association, with its headquarters in San Antonio, were
in such disagreement about its origin and where it ran
that a committee of three was appointed to get the facts.
W. P. Anderson, presumably the chairman, reported back
to the Association, in 1917, that what he called the

34

JESSE CHISHOLM AKD HIS WAGON BOAD 35

John Chisholm Cattle Trail was originally used to drive
cattle to Fort Scott, Kansas. He was completely in error
in so stating; no part of the Chisholm Trail ever went
to Fort Scott. But he makes a greater one in picturing it
as turning west at the site of present-day Wichita and
going up the Arkansas River ' ' as far as Fort Zarah, which
was about where Great Bend, Kansas now stands. From
along this trail there were diversions made by cattle that
went into Army supply at Fort Riley, Fort Harker, near
Ellsworth; Fort Hays, near Hays City; Fort Wallace . . .
the trail continuing on west as far as Fort Bent [he
meant Bent's Fort] and Fort Lyon, Colorado. "

The entire Anderson report, though accepted by the
Association, is too absurd to call for comment. It is cited
only to show that the old trail had fallen into such ob
scurity that any statement made regarding it was readily
believable by many. In the bitter controversy between
Stuart Henry and the publishers of the Emerson Hough
novel, North of Thirty-Six, which purported to present
the authentic historical background of the Chisholm
Trail and Abilene, and which Henry disproved at length, 1
W. B. Webb, a professor of history at the University of
Texas, in a published letter defending the novel, says
astonishingly: . . . " there was no such trail [as the
Chisholm] there were trails continually shifting." The
only possible justification for such a statement may be
found in the fact that in the years when thousands of
Longhorns were being driven north, it became the custom
with some Texans to refer loosely to any trail herd, no
matter how far south it was put together, as "going up
the Chisholm." That was stretching it out for hundreds
of miles beyond where it properly ended. Today no in
formed historian claims that it ever got south of the Bed
River. And that is adding between seventy and eighty
miles to Jesse Chisholm 's road.

36 WILD, WOOIJLY AND WICKED

In 1883, A. T. Andreas produced Ms History of Kansas.
In the section devoted to Sedgwick County and Wichita
appears the first authentic published account of the Chis-
holm Trail. Over the years, in their books and numerous
articles, later writers and historians have told the story of
the old trail at far greater length and in documented de
tail, but Andreas' accuracy has never been successfully
challenged.

Exactly what was the Chisholm trail? Who was Jesse
Chisholm? McCoy calls him "a semi-civilized Indian, "
other writers dismiss him as an ignorant half-breed. His
time and environment considered, he deserved better than
to be called a semi-civilized Indian. He was of mixed blood,
born of a Scotch father and a Cherokee mother, but he was
far removed from being an ignorant half-breed. He was
born in 1805, in Tennessee. When the Cherokee Nation
was removed from its tribal lands in Tennessee and
Georgia, 1819, and resettled in what President Jackson
designated as the " Cherokee Nation," in northern
Arkansas, Chisholm, still in his teens, went west with
them. By the early '30 's, he was trading out of Fort
Smith, Arkansas, with the tribes in the wilderness to the
west, among them the Wichitas.

He was honest, sober, and industrious. In the Creek
Nation, he built his first trading post and married a Creek
girl. Later he established another post on the North Fork
of the Canadian. As he could speak half a dozen Indian
languages, his services were often in demand as an in
terpreter and guide, for he had the confidence and respect
of red men and white. He had interpreted for the Kiowas
<it the big Medicine Lodge peace conclave.

Chisholm had been trading with the Wichitas at his post
on the North Canadian. The association led to his becom
ing an adopted member of the tribe. It couldn't have been
only with an eye to business, for when they went into exile

JESSE CHISHOLM AND HIS WAGON BOAD 37

he went with them. The Wichitas, tillers of the soil, were
a small, peace-loving tribe. The backwash of the great
struggle then being waged between the North and the
South had reached into Territory. The South had made
overtures to the Indians, promising them self-government
among other things. The Wichitas' sympathies were with
the Union, which made them unpopular with their neigh
bors. Their lands were overrun and crops destroyed. Being
no match for the warlike Chickasaws and Kiowas, they
gathered up their belongings, burned their thatched
houses, and with the Caddos retreated into Kansas, where
they settled on the Neosho River, in Woodson County.
This was in 1861. Three years later, they relocated them
selves on the rich bottom land between the Little Arkansas
and the Arkansas, near where the two rivers come to
gether.

Andreas says : * ' Early in the spring of 1864, the Wichita
Indians and affiliating tribes, who had been driven from
the Indian Territory in the winter of 1861-2, and who had
made temporary homes in Woodson County (Kansas),
removed from there and established a camp at the mouth
of the Little Arkansas. The name of their camp was
Wichita, from which the present city of Wichita derived
it name. They remained until the fall of 1867, when they
returned south. ' ' 2

A new agency had been established for them on the
Washita River and designated by the Government as
Wichita Agency.

"With the Wichitas," Andreas continues, "came Jesse
Chisholm . . . He built his house on the stream which
derived its name from him (Chisholm Creek), and moved
in with his family. He also established a ranch between
the two rivers, three miles above their junction ... In the
spring of 1865 Mr. Chisholm located a trail from his ranch
to the present site of the Wichita Agency on the Washita

38 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

River, Indian Territory, distance of 220 miles. This trail
subsequently became and is still known as the * Chisholm
Trail.' "

This was the original and only real Chisholm Trail. It
began at the Arkansas and ended at the Washita. His
wagon road down to the new Wichita Agency and he
always referred to it as a wagon road; Chisholm Trail
was a name given it by others was the extent of Jesse
Chisholm 's contribution to the legendary, and mythical,
trail that sprouted extensions until it was said, as noted,
to run all the way from San Antonio, Texas, to Abilene.

That there was no vestige of a trail north of the
Arkansas is attested by McCoy's sending a surveying
party out to mark one. South of Red River Crossing
there must indeed have been "various, shifting" trails
by which Texas cattle converged on that point. As for
Chisholm having opened a road or trail all the way to
the Red River, as some claim, no proof is offered to sub
stantiate the statement. There is no known reason why
Chisholm should have done so. He established his road
for the sole purpose of giving him wagon communication
with the Poncas and Osages, with whom he was trading.

Many traders used his road, among them his friends
Dutch Bill Greiffenstein, Jim (James R.) Meade, with
whom he was closely associated, and Buffalo Bill Mathew-
son. When the Wichitas established themselves at their
new agency on the Washita, he used his road in trading
with them, also in reactivating his old post on the North
Canadian. That was as far south as his business took
him. It had become a business of sufficient scope to re
quire him to hire several experienced men to drive his
four-mule teams and get his trains of wagons over the
road.

It is interesting to note that the first wagons Jesse
Chisholm sent south from his headquarters on Chisholm

JESSE CHISHOLM AND HIS WAGON KQAD 39

Creek carried goods, to the value of several thousand
dollars, that had been entrusted to him by the white
trader Jim Meade and that were to be sold on a profit-
sharing basis. Meade's dealings with Chisholm were
profitable enough to lead him to establish a post of his
own on the Ninnescah Eiver, about halfway between
today's Wichita and Caldwell, Kansas, within shouting
distance of the trail. Several years later, when his own
business was slow, his wagons hauled Chisholm ? s goods.

Andreas says: "The principal points on the trail are
Wichita, Clearwater, Caldwell, Pond Creek [Bound Pond
Creek], Skeleton Eanch, Buffalo Springs, mouth of
Turkey Creek, Cheyenne [Southern] Agency, Wichita
Agency, and Fort Sill." 3 He is in error in placing Fort
Sill, forty miles south of Wichita Agency, on the main
trail; Fort Sill was reached by a passenger and military
road that branched off the main trail and was not used as
a cattle trail. When the Eock Island Eailroad built down
through Oklahoma, it followed the original Chisholm
Trail for almost its entire length.

Chisholm has often been called a cattle trader. Pri
marily he was not. In his bartering with the Indians he
was principally interested in securing furs and buffalo
robes. That he had to accept some cattle for his goods can
be taken for granted. He could dispose of them without
difficulty to contractors who were supplying beef to the
various agencies. When he had gathered a herd of several
hundred head, he drove them to Fort Gibson, which was
the most important Army post in the eastern half of the
Territory. Contractors could always be found there. In
proof of this is the map of 1876, issued by the Department
of the Interior General Land Office, which shows a trail
coming in from Fort Gibson to the southeast, and inter
secting his wagon road at the Cimarron Eiver. The map
designates it as Chisholm's Cattle Trail. Though it was

4:0 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

no part of the trail used by the big herds of Texas Long-
horns, on their way north, it is responsible for much of
the confusion about the main, or parent, trail.

"Wayne Gard, in The Chisholm Trail, says that Chisholm
took a turn at beef contracting. "In the following summer
he ( Chisholm) gathered 3,000 cattle from the prairies of
Kansas and had them trailed to the Sac and Fox agency. ' ' 4
He establishes the time as the summer of 1868. That was
the first summer that Texas cattle in great number
reached the Kansas prairies. But they could hardly have
mattered to Jesse Chisholm, who had been in his grave
for months, having died in agony on the North Canadian,
at his Council Grove ranch, several miles down-river
from his trading post.

Jim Meade 's account of the death of Chisholm has been
accepted by Andreas, Grard, and many other historians.
There is no reason to doubt it. Andreas says * ' Chisholm
died on the north fork of the Canadian River in the Indian
Territory, March 4, 1868, of cholera morbus, caused by
eating bear's grease that had been poisoned by being
melted in a brass kettle. ' ' 5 Today the cause of death
would be ascribed to an acute attack of ptomaine
poisoning.

Meade tells how he arrived at Chisholm 's post on
March 7, with his wagons loaded with goods for him, and
found the place deserted, ". . . where a few weeks before
there had been a great encampment. " He found signs of
hurried flight- Turning down-river, in the direction of the
ranch, he came to a newly made enclosure of logs. Within
was a fresh grave, with a board at the head that bore the
simple inscription: " Jesse Chisholm died March 4th.
1868."

At the ranch Meade found Greiffenstein, a Dr. Green-
way, and several others and from them learned what had
happened. He does not say who put up the headboard on

JESSE CHISHOLM AND HIS WAGON ROAD 41

the grave. Very likely it was Greiffenstein. Today, a suit
able monument marks the site at Left Hand Spring, five
miles east of present-day Greenfield, Blaine County,
Oklahoma.

So Jesse Chisholm died, a good man, honest, honor
able, who little suspected that history was to reserve a
niche for him.

Frank King, the Texas cowboy turned writer, claimed
in several magazine articles that Jesse Chisholm and
John Chisum were related. According to him Chisum's
real name was Chisholm; that it had been misspelled
when he enlisted in the Army at New Orleans and that he
had never bothered to correct the error. King was ob
viously depending on two small books published by T. U.
Taylor, formerly dean of the School of Engineering at
the University of Texas. In Ms first book, The Chisholm
Trail and Other Routes, 6 Taylor said that research
proved the Chisholm and Chisum families to be related.
In his second book, Jesse Chisholm, 7 he gives the results
of further research and says they were not related.

Undoubtedly King was intimately acquainted with
some segments of the Chisholm story. He pieced out the
rest from hearsay and what he read. While thus able to
point out the blunders of other writers, he made greater
ones himself. In giving this bit of Chisholm family
genealogy, he is on safe ground: "John D. Chisholm,
whose wife was Cherokee Indian, led the dissatisfied
Cherokees out of Tennessee and Georgia. John D. had
two sons, Ignatus and Thomas. With the Cherokees came
Charley Eogers, whose wife was full-blood Cherokee
Indian. He had three beautiful half-breed daughters and
some sons. Maria, the oldest daughter, married John
Drew . . . Talahenia was the second wife of General Sam
Houston, and Martha married Ignatus Chisholm. Jesse

42 WILD, WOOLLY AKD WICKED

Chisholm was his son and Martha, his sister, was my
maternal grandmother. ' ' 8

Little doubt remains as to how the first herd of Long-
horns reached Abilene. This was the herd belonging to the
Calif ornians, Wheeler, Wilson, and Hicks, and which Mc
Coy says broke the trail. They crossed the Red River at
Red River Crossing. The crossing had been in use for
years and was well known. With its low banks and shal
lows it was recognized as the best crossing in a hundred
miles. Once across the Red, the Californians had driven
north until, by chance, they reached Fort Arbuckle. There
they found Buffalo Bill Mathewson, buffalo hunter, guide,
and trader. Being on his way north, Mathewson agreed to
guide them as far as Chisholm 's post on the North Cana
dian. By following the tracks made by Chisholm ? s wagons
they reached Kansas. The name Chisholm Trail had not
yet been coined and was not to be heard for another year.

Bill Mathewson has been forgotten, but he made a real
contribution to what, in its over-all length, came to be
called the Old Chisholm Trail, for where the first big herd
had passed the droppings provided an excellent road map
for those who came after.

In the days when Abilene was a booming cow town, the
trail north from the Arkansas River bottoms, which
McCoy had had staked out, was as often called the Abi
lene Trail as by any other name. After the cattle trade
shifted to Ellsworth, it was the only name used. Today,
knowing the romantic interest the Chisholm Trail has for
traveling Americans, and with an eye on the tourist 's
dollar, Abilene, with what may be called indifference to
native pride, advertises itself to those who visit its
replica of Old Texas Street, as "The End of the Chisholm
Trail "

The name has been put to many uses. It is strange,
however, that when the cattle trade left Abilene and went

JESSE CHISHOLM AK"D HIS WAGOtf ROAD 43

to Ellsworth the new trail that was opened was never
called the Chisholm Trail. It was Cox's Trail, named for
William M. Cox, general livestock agent for the Kansas
Pacific Eailroad, who surveyed it.

An additional word on the Chisholm Trail and its
paternity now seems necessary.

The late Louis Nordyke, the well-known writer and
critic, in what appears to have been his last article, writ
ten just before his death, and published in The Roundup,
the monthly publication of the Western Writers of Amer
ica, Inc., makes this startling statement :

"Eastern writers, fascinated by the name of
the Chisholm Trail, sought something on the
origin of the name. They heard of Jesse Chis
holm, the Indian trader, and they pinned the
name of the trail on him. Even biographers of
the calibre of Wayne Gard have swallowed this,
although it was comparatively easy to find out
that the cattle trail was named for a man from
Gronzales County, Texas, Thornton Chisholm,
who blazed the trail from below San Antonio to
the Red River."

This is sheer absurdity. Had Nordyke done some of the
research that he advises others to do, he would have dis
covered that he was turning up an old Texan tale,
largely local to Gonzales County, that there were two
Chisholm Trails, one running from San Antonio up to
Bed Eiver, and another beginning there and going up to
the Kansas cow towns, and that the Texas end had taken
its name from Thornton Chisholm.

The trail herds that came up from south Texas fol
lowed no beaten path, no one route. It was not until they
neared Red River Crossing that the various trails con
verged. It was Texas cowmen who carried the name
"Chisholm Trail" back to Texas. If Thornton Chisholm

44 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

tried to appropriate some of the credit and there is no
reliable evidence that he did his claim was filed so
tardily that it had no validity, then or now.

If he ever drove cattle as far north as Eed River, that
would seem to be as far as he got. Joseph McCoy, who of
necessity knew all the trail drivers who shipped at Abi
lene, does not mention him. Nor can his name be found
in Kansas newspapers of the period, or in other records.

In evaluating Nordyke's (to me) preposterous state
ment, it would be well to remember that he, as John Wes
ley Hardin's biographer, in relating the historic meeting
between Hardin and Wild Bill Hickok, in Abilene (see
Chapter X of this narrative) that he, and he alone of all
writers of consequence, accepted without question Har
din 's fanciful tale that he had used the "road agent 's
spin" on Hickok, disarmed him and made him talk small.

To say anything further would be to belabor the point.

CHAPTER V

TEXAS ABILENE

| OME WEEKS before the first herds of
'68 were due to reach Abilene, a num
ber of Texans arrived by rail from
Kansas City and settled down at Drovers' Cottage to
await their coming. They were big owners who had put
the job of getting their cattle north in the hands of com
petent trail bosses. With them had come dealers from the
Midwest, speculators, representatives of the Kansas City,
Missouri, packing plants, and a number of men of means
with money to invest if a good opportunity presented
itself.

Among the last were Jacob Augustin and C. H. Lebold,
a banker from Ohio. There was a crying need for a reli
able bank in Abilene. Texans, having been left with their
strongboxes filled with worthless paper money issued by
the Confederacy, were suspicious of Yankee greenbacks.
They were even more averse to accepting commercial
paper ; they wanted to be paid for their cattle in specie
(hard money). A bank dealing in New York exchange,
which was payable in gold, could hardly fail to do a very
profitable business.

To get Lebold and Augustin to open a bank may have
been McCoy's real purpose in getting them to settle there

45

TEXAS ABILENE 47

required fewer men to hold a herd than to drive it, owners
saved money by cutting down their crews. The men who
were cut loose made a beeline for town, their wages burn
ing the proverbial hole in the pocket. Those who paused to
visit the barbershop for a bath, shave, and haircut, and
to have their mustaches blackened and "set" before
plunging into the vice and unrestrained violence of Texas
Street, were decidedly in the minority.

McCoy says there were days when as many as five thou
sand cowboys were in and around Abilene. To a man of
his religious nature, abhorring violence and immorality, it
may have seemed so ; but the figure he sets is incredibly
exaggerated. That becomes apparent when one remembers
that ten men comprised the average crew. At no time were
five hundred outfits coming and going from Abilene at the
same time. Trim the figure to a thousand wild-eyed, gun-
toting cow hands, bent on crowding a year's fun into ten
days, or less, .and it becomes believable.

In July the Topeka Commonwealth commented: "At
this writing, Hell is now in session in Abilene." This was
decidedly no exaggeration. Saloons and brothels operated
around the clock. There was no hour of the day or night
that wasn't punctuated by the racketing blast of a six-gun,
whether fired in fun or in earnest. From late morning to
nightfall the harlots paraded up and down Texas Street,
togged out in what, to female-starved cowboys, was their
"finery."

Most of them wore tasseled white kid half boots. Many
a "fair Cyprian," as Kansas newspapers loved to refer to
them, shoved a deadly little Derringer into her boot top
before venturing forth .for business and amusement. The
post office and stores of the town being congregated in the
two blocks of Texas Street, the good women of the town
and their children had perforce to rub shoulders with the
painted and perfumed denizens of the cribs and pick their

48 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

way around groups of drunken cowboys. They were not
molested, but they lived in fear, never knowing when they
might be attacked. It was a feeling shared by all the perma
nent residents of Abilene. No one knew what the morrow
would bring.

It was an everyday occurrence to see drunken cowboys
racing their ponies through Texas Street, their six-guns
blazing as they gave vent to their exuberance. Quarrels
that began indoors, at bar or gambling table, erupted
to the sidewalk and ended in gunfire. The vanquished,
whether killed or only wounded, was picked up by his
friends and carried out to his camp on the prairie. These
horsebackers from Texas never used their fists to settle an
argument. They held fist-fighting to be a cut beneath them,
something reserved for teamsters, bullwhackers, and sol
diers. They didn't mind pistol-whipping an opponent or
wrenching a leg off a chair and clubbing him unconscious.
Abilene shivered in its boots at thought of what would
happen if a score of the Texans suddenly decided to
"buffalo " the town.

Usually in a boom town there was a hard core of perma
nent citizens who could organize and successfully resist
any attempt of an invading swarm of lawless transients
to take charge. Somewhere they would find some vestige
of law to sustain them. There was nothing like that in
Abilene. To begin with, the natives were outnumbered six
to one, or better. "It was a wide-open settlement, with no
civic organization, no jail, no court, practically no attempt
at police control. Everybody free to be drunk anywhere,
to gamble in public, to shoot to kill." l

Across the nation Abilene was winning the reputation
of being the toughest town in the United States. A corre
spondent for the New York Tribune wrote: "Gathered
together in Abilene and its environs is the greatest
collection of Texas cowboys, rascals, desperados and ad-

TEXAS ABILENE 49

venturesses the United States has ever known. There is
no law, no restraint in this seething cauldron of vice and
depravity. ' ' 2

There was law in Abilene, law of a sort. It was not of
the usual variety ; it was saloon law, law by edict, and the
proprietors, by banding together, enforced it. It was they
and their retinue of thugs, gamblers, and whores who were
there to inflame the appetites and lusts of the cowboy and
strip him of his last dollar who had taken over Abilene.
They discovered, however, that in the Texas cowboy they
were dealing with a new breed of man who didn't come
within their past experience. He could be fleeced as readily
as any other, but once he had the bit in his teeth, he
couldn't be controlled.

Because there were no dance-halls in Abilene that season,
it was in the saloons that the red-light women did their
"hustling." It gave rise to endless jealous quarreling
among their suitors. The proprietors had trouble enough
on their hands without that. As a protective measure, de
signed solely to improve business, the painted ladies were
suddenly barred. The move was unpopular, but the saloon
men were strong enough to enforce it.

Prostitution as practiced in Abilene was a sordid
business, as it had to be with a complete lack of sanitary
facilities. Attempts have been made to glamorize the early
cow-town prostitutes. If paint, powder, perfume, and
wantonness made them desirable to the befuddled eyes of
the woman-hungry cowboy, even he, in his saner moments,
realized that they were coarse, ugly, middle-aged hay bags
who had left their youth and such good looks as they might
once have possessed on the steamboats or in the river
towns from St. Louis to New Orleans.

If Abilene was aghast at what was happening to the
town and viewed the future with gloomy misgivings, no one
could deny that, in one way or another, most people were

50 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

profiting from the cattle trade. The stores were busy and
property values were increasing. The G-ulf House opened
its doors. Though it could accommodate no more than forty
men, it was seldom taxed to capacity. The hundreds of
transients who rode into Abilene were not interested in
a place to sleep. But they had to eat. The several spots
where what passed for a meal could be purchased, after
standing in line for an hour, were so inadequate that hun
gry men were turned away every night. An enterprising
citizen, whose name unfortunately is lost to history, built
a clapboard hut on a farm wagon, installed a long counter,
a bench, and a stove and gave the country its first lunch
room on wheels. Every evening he drove up Texas Street,
parked at the edge of the plank sidewalk in front of the
Longhorn saloon, and kept his frying pans hot until dawn.
For fifty years, in hundreds of "Western towns it was a
familiar sight to see a lunch wagon pulled up at the curb
on a busy downtown street. There may be towns where
they still appear soon after the sun goes down.

By the end of June the demand for cars for the shipment
of cattle had risen to over a thousand. The Kansas Pacific
Railroad, still skeptical about the Texas cattle trade, was
caught short. The bridge across the Missouri River was
still uncompleted, making it difficult to lease cars from
other railroads. To meet the unexpected demand, several
hundred flat cars were transformed into stock cars by
building frameworks on them. For the first time cattlemen
from distant Northern ranges appeared in Abilene. They
came from as far away as Utah, Wyoming, and Montana.
Speculators from Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois came in
increasing number. The ranchers from the West and North
were principally interested in buying stock cattle, for
which, heretofore, there had been little demand. This
seemed to round out the possibilities of the Abilene market
and guarantee its permanency.

TEXAS ABILENE 51

McCoy estimates that fully 40 per cent of the cattle sold
in Abilene that year were shipped to Illinois to be fattened
on corn and shaped up for market. No better arrangement
could be arrived at than for Texas to produce the cattle,
the Midwest to fatten them, and the East to consume them.
To take advantage of it, a firm of Chicago speculators
set up a depot on the Mississippi at the mouth of the Red
Biver and contracted for forty thousand Longhorns to be
driven there, (Less than ten thousand head were actually
delivered when the bottom dropped out of the scheme.)
The cattle were crowded on the decks of steamboats.
" After six to twelve days of perpetual standing on the
hard deck without room to lay down, or drink, or feed,
suffering with the heat and overcrowding, they were
landed at Cairo, Illinois, in great poverty of flesh and
famishing with hunger, and so near dead from exhaustion
that in many instances they had to be helped up the levee
to the shipping yards of the LC.R.R. (the Illinois Central)
upon which road they were shipped to Tolono, Illinois, and
there unloaded and turned upon the prairies whereon all
the domestic cattle of the county were grazing. ' ' 3

It set the stage for the greatest calamity that ever faced
the Texas cattle trade. Before thirty days of hot weather
had passed the domestic cattle on the prairies and pasture
lands began to sicken and die. Grazers became alarmed
and rushed their cattle off to market, in the East, fearing
that if they kept them they would lose their entire herd.
The cattle were already infected and they died before they
reached their destination. About Tolono, Illinois, nearly
every cow of domestic blood died. In one township every
milk cow except one died.

Newspaper headlines screamed "Spanish Fever." This
wasn't just a trifling recurrence of previous bouts with
the disease that would soon blow over and be forgotten.
This was war; the whole country was aroused. The

52 WILD, WOOLLY ASTD WICKED

Federal Government took notice and sent out experts to
control the epidemic and discover its cause. In New York
State, Governor Fenton appointed inspectors to quaran
tine all cattle from the West and asked his legislature to
ban the sale of Texas beef in the butcher shops. Governor
Eichard J. Oglesby, of Illinois, mindful of one of the
state's leading industries, sent commissioners east to
forestall any drastic legislation.

In Abilene the market collapsed. There were several
hundred head of domestic cattle in Dickinson County.
Some sickened and died. Though the grangers who had
settled in the eastern part of the county were as yet pro
ducing little in the way of crops, they were getting numer
ous land was easily acquired under the provisions of the
Homestead Act, Preemption Act, and the so-called Soldier
Grants and they objected strenuously to having Texas
cattle grazing on their untilled acres. To appease them for
the loss of their cows and keep them from taking a united
stand, McCoy offered to reimburse them. The railroad at
first agreed to share the expense but changed its mind and
McCoy Brothers footed the bill, amounting to about five
thousand dollars.

In the hope of drumming up some business, McCoy had
handbills and placards printed, announcing semi-monthly
public sales at auction of stock cattle at the shipping yards
at Abilene. Young men were sent by train over western
Missouri and Iowa, eastern Nebraska and Kansas, to dis
tribute them. The furor over the outbreak of Spanish fever
seemed to be dying down. As a result the first sale was
well attended. A thousand head were sold at satisfactory
prices. Before the day arrived for the second sale, all the
stock cattle brought in had been sold.

But there was no demand for beeves. Having proved
what advertising could do, McCoy hit on the idea of send
ing a carload of wild buffaloes back East, with appropriate

TEXAS ABILENE 53

signs on the sides of the car calling attention to the cattle
market at Abilene. Taking grown buffaloes alive by the
lasso proved to be somewhat of an undertaking. The six
Mexican cowboys he hired, all expert ropers, were shipped
ont beyond Hays City. Though they had no difficulty in
finding buffaloes, it took them several days to capture
three and get them loaded.

After hanging on each side of the car "a large canvas
upon which a flaming advertisement was painted in
striking colors of the cattle at or near Abilene, it was sent
through to Chicago via St. Louis, eliciting a great amount
of attention and newspaper comment. ' ' 4

He followed this P. T. Barnumism by arranging an
excursion of Illinois cattlemen to western Kansas. On re
turning to Abilene they were shown the fine herds of Long-
horns being held on the prairies. Several excursionists
were induced to invest. In a few days the market "assumed
its wonted life and activity. Indeed it seemed to rebound
from the depressing effects of the Spanish fever excite
ment, and long before cold weather set in, the last bullock
was sold, 9 * 5

Seventy-five thousand head of Texas cattle reached
Abilene that year. Of that total, at least fifty thousand
were shipped out by rail; the balance was driven north
and west on the hoof by stockmen and contractors for
military supply and the Indian agencies. Though it had
been a season threatened with disaster, it had been a big
year. But the menace Spanish fever posed had not been
licked. That it had political value in the hands of un
scrupulous politicians became apparent when the Illinois
State Legislature met in regular session late that fall.

With the close of the cattle season the exodus from
Abilene began. In a few days the town was deserted* The
saloons were closed and padlocked ; the gamblers and the
crooks were gone; so were the prostitutes and their fancy

54 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

men. Jake Karatof sky and others had closed their stores.
A few shipped their stock of goods to Kansas City or other
points where some business might be found. Nobody was
through with Abilene. The pickings had been too good.
They would be back, with reinforcements, before the fol
lowing June rolled around. The tumult of their leaving
died away and native Abilene gratefully settled down to
a long, dull winter. Those who had made money out of the
Texans busied themselves with erecting new buildings;
others, knowing what '69 must bring, wondered if they
could survive it.

The winter proved to be anything but dull and monoto
nous for the man who was responsible for the miracle that
had been wrought on the Kansas prairies. His difficulties
with the Kansas Pacific Railroad reached the point where
they threatened the very life of the Abilene market. He
had a contract with the company guaranteeing the firm of
McCoyBrothers one eighth of the gross amount of freights
derived from the shipment of livestock originating at
Abilene. The Kansas Pacific not only repudiated the con
tract as excessive, but refused to negotiate a new one at
rates it could afford to pay until the McCoys agreed to the
cancellation of the original contract. Until that was done,
the railroad would pay no part of the money already
earned, and in the future would not furnish a single car
to any party desiring to load cattle at Abilene.

It left the McCoys with the choice of submitting to the
company's demands or having recourse to the courts. To
avoid a long and expensive legal battle, they offered to
sell to the railroad the shipping installations at Abilene
for a quarter of what they had cost. This offer was re
jected; the original contract had to be canceled or McCoy
Brothers could sue and be damned.

Being acquainted with the size of McCoy's investment
in Abilene, including the Drovers' Cottage, which would

TEXAS ABILENE 55

be a worthless white elephant if the cattle trade were dis
continued, the Kansas Pacific was reasonably sure that it
could force the issue its way. That was as apparent to Joe
McCoy as it was to the railroad. After a series of con
ferences with his brothers he assumed the whole load and
came to terms with the railroad. When this was done the
old contract canceled and a new one negotiated he was
paid. To improve his bargaining position in the future, he
disposed of the Drovers ' Cottage to Major M. B. George
before the '69 season began. He had lost thousands of
dollars, but he was no sooner out of his difficulties with the
railroad than he found himself embroiled in the fight of
his life, with the very existence of the Texas cattle trade
hanging in the balance.

With the opening of the Illinois State Legislature, a
newly elected member of the upper house from the
Danville district, which included Tolono and Champaign
County, where the Texas fever epidemic had struck the
hardest, introduced a bill totally prohibiting the admis
sion of or passage through the state, by rail or other
means, of Texas Longhorn cattle. It went to committee
and was promptly voted out.

If enacted into law, it meant the end of all Texas
cattle business, not only in Abilene but everywhere. With
the state of Illinois extending from the Great Lakes to the
Ohio River, every practical means of shipping Bast by rail
would be shut off. McCoy rushed to Springfield and for
nineteen days, singlehanded, without any help even from
the Kansas Pacific Railroad, which should have been
as vitally interested as he in blocking passage, he fought
the bill. Public feeling, dormant for a few months, was
whipped into flame by politicians who assumed the role
of crusaders fighting to save the livestock industry of the
state from extinction.

McCoy was fighting a losing battle against overwhelm-

56 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

ing odds. But he hung on and finally succeeded in getting
an amendment attached to the hill exempting Texas cattle
that had been wintered in the north from its provisions.
It passed by the slim majority of one vote and Governor
Oglesby signed it into law.

This was Joseph McCoy's most shining hour. Though
he was a showman and much that he did was crassly
commercial, there was something heroic and above self-
interest in the fight he had waged. He is rightfully called
the father of the Texas cattle trade. With as much justice,
he could also be called its savior. It was not his fault that
the amendment he had succeeded in getting written into
the original bill was abused and by chicanery and subter
fuge made meaningless.

A few months on a cold northern range were believed to
kill the ticks a Longhorn brought up from Texas, thereby
ending any danger of infecting domestic cattle. One of the
provisions of the amendment made it necessary for the
owner of a herd of Longhorns to appear before a notary
public and swear under oath that his cattle had been
"wintered." They could then be shipped into Illinois
"under seal."

Listen to McCoy: "It was astonishing the following
summer how many 'wintered cattle' arrived in Abilene.
In fact it was found difficult to get a steer or cow, four or
five years old, without it having been 'wintered* some
where. And as to those 'certificates under seal,' there was
no trouble to procure them in abundance of a hatchet-
faced, black-headed limb of the law. He was one of those
unprincipled, petty demagogues who to this day is more
widely known for his infamy than Ms ability. For months
he had been oscillating between beggary and starvation,
and was only too glad of the opportunity to 'manufacture 7
certificates by the dozen, or cart load, for a small con
sideration." e

TEXAS ABILENE 57

Knowing that tick-ridden cattle, fresh off the trail, were
being shipped daily from Abilene and put on the grass
pastures of Illinois by the most callous kind of trickery
undoubtedly accounted for some of McCoy's indignation.
But it went deeper than that. He knew that the ship
pers and speculators, who were making a mockery of the
" wintered cattle" provision of the law, were asking for
another outbreak of Spanish fever. If that occurred, the
Texas cattle trade was finished. State after state would
embargo the Longhorns. It would be useless to fight it.
He could touch a match to the Abilene yards and watch
them go up in smoke.

CHAPTER VI

BOOM AND BTJST

[""JARLY IN the spring of 1869 a cloud-
1 []L burst sent innocent little Mud Creek
L I on a rampage. The flood waters spread
out over the Texas Street section of town, the angry
torrent sweeping away some of the older buildings and
toppling the flimsy new structures, some not yet half com
pleted. Men, women, and children took to the roofs of their
houses and remained there all day, cold and hungry, and
watched squawking chickens, hogs, and outhouses being
carried off by the foaming current. The Alamo and other
saloons were put under water for a depth of several feet.
The flood made a clean sweep of the cribs on red-
light row, bearing them off like so many bobbing corks and
depositing them all the way to the Smoky Hill Eiver.

The flood passed and Abilene began digging itself out of
the yellow mud. Rebuilding began at once. As early as the
middle of March little groups of diamond-studded stran
gers began arriving on the afternoon train from the East
and took up residence at the Drovers' Cottage. Without
exception they were successful entrepreneurs of vice and
depravity. During the winter they had heard of the rich
pickings to be garnered in Abilene, and they were on the
ground early to get their share. They were soon joined by

58

BOOM AND BUST 59

others of their kind who had been there the previous year.

Work was begun at once on the new red-light district
north of the tracks, which has been mentioned. New
buildings to house dance-halls and more saloons were
erected on what vacant lots remained in the two blocks
of Texas Street (First Street) and its offshoot to the east
(Cedar Street), on which were located the Alamo and the
Lone Star saloons. Where the cribs had stood work was
begun on a new hotel, the Abilene House.

The first herds reached the shipping yards on June 1.
One early outfit reported that it had been attacked by a
band of armed men, jayhawkers, they called them, and
had lost several hundred head of Longhorns. There were
similar reports as other trail herds came in. The term
"jayhawker" is a respected one in Kansas today. It was
considerably less than that in 1869. It was loosely used
then and applied equally to irate grangers, banding to
gether to drive Texan cattle off their lands, and by gangs
of bushrangers and outright rustlers masquerading as
grangers.

The big herds had not reached Abilene that early the
previous year, but the town was not caught unprepared.
The girls were there, railing at having been moved so far
from the center of things, the gamblers were waiting, and
the saloons were wide open. Literally, the season opened
with a bang. A cowboy pulled up his bronc in front of the
Applejack saloon and through the window fired and killed
a man standing at the bar. He raked his mount with the
spurs and was gone, unrecognized. Who he was or the
reason for the slaying were never discovered.

There is no record of the number of men killed by gun
fire, or stabbed to death, in Abilene that summer. The town
had no police force to tabulate such statistics. Men who
were there placed the number at from six to twenty.
Add to that the Texans who left town alive but died of

60 WILD, WOOLLY ABTD WICKED

their wounds and were buried in unmarked graves on the
prairies and twenty-five would seem to be a safe estimate.
This does not take into account the brutal pistol- whippings
and clubbings that occurred nightly. Dozens of cowboys
were beaten and rolled before they had time to fritter their
money away on whiskey and women. The Lone Star dance-
hall, diagonally across the street from the Alamo, with
its little curtained boxes on a balcony surrounding the
dance floor, was a vicious deadfall. Liquor was sold on
the premises. The girls who worked there hustled drinks
on a commission, in addition to the checks they collected
from their dancing. Their scanty costumes, knee-lengih
skirts, bare arms, and Mexican style camisoles that ex
posed their voluptuousness, left little to the imagination.
They had rooms at the nearby Gulf House, with " privi
leges," which meant male visitors, day or night.

Texas owners never tried to curb the wildness of their
men. If they had been so minded, it would have been effort
wasted. As for themselves, they were not averse to having
a fling at the fleshpots. They drank their whiskey neat,
and a lot of it, but they rarely let it interfere with their
business in Abilene, which began and ended at the stock
yards.

An evaluation of the Texans who appear in this narra
tive must be made. It cannot be denied that they came up
the trail with a chip on their shoulder. The animosities
occasioned by the Civil War were still too fresh in their
minds to be forgotten. The men they met in Abilene and
other Kansas towns were Northerners and were regarded
with suspicion and often with hatred. Of the army of
parasites, gamblers, saloonkeepers, prostitutes, and crooks
who preyed on them, not over 5 per cent were from the
South ; the rest wore the Northern label. All too often the
Texans, feeling that they were in enemy country, came
looking for trouble and were ever ready to fight for their

BOOM AND BUST 61

rights, real or fancied. To lump all Texans together and
portray them as participants in the saturnalia of vice and
violence that descended on the Kansas cow towns would
be a gross perversion of the truth. There were many
among them, owners, trail bosses, even cowpunchers, who
were honorable, moral, law-abiding men.

The summer rocked along. It was a repetition of '68,
only wilder and more lawless. Citizens were captured on
Texas Street, stripped to the skin, and then herded into
Karatof sky's store and outfitted free from head to toe in
cowboy fun. In the red-light houses north of the tracks
there was nightly brawling and violence. Two of the
women were killed. On Texas Street cowboys dueled in
broad daylight.

Abilene began to pray for the end of the season. Some
thing had to be done. T. C. Henry, McCoy's friend, and by
now one of Abilene 's leading citizens, of whom there were
better than two hundred, started a movement to organize
the town, give it a government that could pass ordinances
and establish a police force. Henry had prospered,
largely because the value of the real estate he bought had
increased tenfold. On the other hand, he was finding it
increasingly difficult to induce settlers to buy farm land
in a region that was dominated by Godless Abilene.

Though his efforts didn't result in any action being
taken, it seemed to awaken the best element in Abilene to
its responsibilities. Plans were made for building a school-
house and a small frame church, the labor and necessary
money being raised by popular subscription. Limestone
was quarried from the cliffs along the Smoky Hill for the
schoolhouse, a tiny one-room building.

Inexplicably both school and church were erected
adjacent to Texas Street.

By the end of July, Abilene was an island in a sea of
cattle. Twenty-eight hundred carloads had been shipped in

62 WILD, WOOLLY AKD WICKED

two months, together with other thousands that had been
sold to contractors for the beef issue at the various Indian
reservations. Prices were skyrocketing. Fancy fat beeves
were bringing thirty-five dollars a head. The recurrence of
the Spanish fever epidemic, which McCoy had feared, had
not materialized. There had never been such confidence
before at the Abilene market. Everyone was playing with
blue chips now. The big First National Bank, of Kansas
City, Missouri, established a branch in Abilene. Small for
tunes were being made in a few days.

McCoy began speculating. No one knew cattle better
than he. He was also well acquainted with the vagaries of
the market. He once had said that the reason no cattle
traders had ever become nationally known was because
they always went broke before they had time to become
famous. With all his acumen, he was on the road to going
broke. He had money and the credit to enable him to
weather any passing storm, or so he believed. The jam he
suddenly found himself caught in was no passing storm.
The Eastern market, glutted with cattle, collapsed. Beeves
he had bought at thirty and thirty-five dollars a head
wouldn't bring more than half that sum. He was loaded to
the hilt. Believing the market would come back, he began
borrowing money. He had thousands owed him by the
Kansas Pacific. He hurried to St. Louis to collect it. Again
the company repudiated its contract.

There hadn't been any more doubt in his creditors'
minds than his that the money would be paid promptly.
In fact they were counting as heavily on it as he, knowing
that the sum involved was more than enough to make him
solvent. Desperate by now, McCoy had no choice but to
turn to the courts. As soon as he filed suit, the roof fell in
on him. Though among his creditors were men who had
become wealthy through his efforts, they had no mercy on
him; they demanded their money. The attachments piled

BOOM AND BUST 63

up as he was unable to meet his obligations. Bankrupt, he
signed away the stockyards that had become his life and
put up his claim against the railroad as collateral. All he
was able to save out of the debacle was a herd of nine
hundred choice Longhorns. He put them on the prairie
west of Abilene to hold them over winter, still confident
that the market would revive the following spring.

As little as that cost, he was hard-pressed to meet the
demands on his empty purse. The litigation against the
railroad dragged along for two years before it finally
reached the Kansas State Supreme Court and was decided
in his favor. It more than took care of his indebtedness and
enabled him to get a new start. But he was never a big
operator again. He turned to buying scrub cattle for the
Indian agencies.

It was a lucrative business for the drover if he closed
his eyes to the thieving rascality of the agents. McCoy soon
had enough of it. Bitterly he says: "Not one contract in
each hundred made was ever filled in letter and spirit.
Often the cattle would be delivered at an agreed net weight
greater than the actual gross weight, and when delivered
on one day would be stole [sic] from the government agent
at night and re-delivered the next day. Of course the
government agent was entirely innocent and was not con
niving with the contractor. Oh no! ... They are pure self-
sacrificing patriots, and are notorious for their abhorrence
of money, for don't they always get poor in a year, when
taking care of some little starving remnant of a tribe ; and
are compelled to remove their families from a sumptu
ous log cabin to an abhorred brick mansion abounding
with lawns, drives, arbors, statuary and other afflictions
peculiar to that class of poverty?" 1

One evening late in August, four youths boys in their
teens were returning from a party when they were set '
upon by a bunch of well-liquored cowboys riding back to

64 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

their camp east of the stockyards. They circled around the
boys, doing a lot of harmless shooting and giving them a
good scare. One of the lads tried to make a run for it. He
was roped and dragged back. All four were made to dance,
with slugs kicking up the dust at their heels, in a typical
tenderfoot hazing. Lights appeared in several houses and
men stepped out armed with shotguns. The Texans had had
their fun. With a bloodcurdling Texas yell they rode off.

In itself the incident didn't amount to anything; such
things had happened before. What made it outstanding
was that it had happened several blocks removed from
Texas Street. The cry was raised that a person was no
longer safe in any part of Abilene.

The excitement presented T. C. Henry with his op
portunity and he began beating the drum again for
incorporating the town. The permanent population of
Abilene had grown to almost three hundred adults. A
petition was circulated praying for the incorporation of
Abilene as a city of the third class. When it bore the re
quired signatures, the petition was presented to the Pro
bate Court on September 3. Judge Cyrus Kilgore granted
the prayer of the petitioners. He also appointed T. C.
Henry; James B. Shane, Henry's real estate partner ; Tom
Sheran, the grocer ; Tim Hersey, and Joseph GL McCoy as
trustees of the city to act until their successors should be
elected.

This Board of Trustees chose Henry as chairman,
making him the mayor ex-officio of Abilene. The end of the
cattle season was so near at hand that it was deemed ad
visable to wait until it was over before setting up the town
government. It had been a tremendous year. One hundred
seventy-five thousand head of cattle had changed hands at
Abilene in the past four months. Even in the face of his
financial problems that incredible figure must have given
Joe McCoy some satisfaction.

BOOM AND BUST 65

Henry and a Board of Trustees were elected in the
spring. The first ordinance passed made it a crime to carry
firearms within the town limits. Other ordinances licensing
saloons, gambling, and prostitution followed, the mayor
taking the position that as long as it would be impossible
to do away with such institutions they should at least pay
the expenses of the town government.

Work was begun on a new courthouse and a small jail,
with the schoolhouse, the only stone buildings in Abilene.
The jail was built in the heart of the Texas Street district,
where it would be convenient. Provision was made for
hiring a marshal and several deputies.

With the Texas cattle trade now so firmly established at
Abilene, it seems to have been the feeling of those who
pandered to it that if the arrangement was not permanent
it would continue at least for a number of years. Other
wise that hardheaded fraternity, with a keen eye for
the dollar, would hardly have invested in new palaces of
entertainment and spent money on refurbishing and im
proving the old.

On Texas Street two buildings were torn down to make
room for the Novelty Theatre. On the corner almost oppo
site the schoolhouse, a large, square, two-story house of
some elegance, its back yard screened from public gaze by
a high board fence, was erected. Its ornate furnishings,
shipped out from Kansas City, were the most expensive
in town. This "mansion," resplendent in its yellow paint,
was to house the bagnio of Miss Mattie Silks.

In latter years she lived to be eighty-one the ir
repressible Mattie, after reigning for years as the undis
puted queen of Denver *s notorious Market Street "line,"
often voiced with an old woman's liveliness irreverent
memories of her days in Abilene, Hays City, and Dodge.

She could not have been more than twenty-one or two
when she arrived in Abilene, if her story that she was only

66 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

nineteen when she opened her first house in Springfield,
Missouri, is to be believed. She had been run out of Olathe,
Kansas, for running a sporting house. Who put up the
money for her establishment in Abilene is not known, but
it was from Olathe that she came to Abilene. Her early
photographs show her to have been a very pretty young
woman, and she brought to the tough little cow town an
elegant, expensive level of prostitution. Her establishment
was for only the elite; her "boarders" were young and
attractive ; champagne was the only beverage she permit
ted to be sold.

School children had to pass her door, and they soon be
came well acquainted with the business conducted within.
But she must have acted with some decorum, for it is not
of record that she ever ran afoul of Marshal Tom Smith.
As for Wild Bill, she often boasted that he had taught her
how to use a six-gun. The only time she ever used one,
and that was in Denver, the marksmanship she exhibited
reflected no credit on her tutor. 2

It was over one of her girls, Jessie Hazel, that Wild Bill
and Phil Coe, the Texas gambler, two handsome, mag
nificent bulls, locked horns.

"I never was a prostitute," Mattie often insisted, "I
was a madame from the time I was nineteen years old,
in Springfield, Missouri, I never worked for another
madame. The girls who work for me are prostitutes, but
I am and always have been a madame. "

She was inordinately proud of this fine class distinction.
It wasn't a point of view peculiar only to Mattie. Teddy
Blue Abbott recounts an incident that occurred in Willie
Johnson's parlor house in Miles City, Montana. He was
well acquainted with Willie. On hearing a scuffle below he
ran down to investigate and saw her fancy man disappear
ing out the door and Willie standing there with a puffed

BOOM AND BUST 67

eye and blood running down her face from a cut on her
forehead. He tried to console her.

"I don't mind the black eye, Teddy," she whimpered,
* ' but he called me a whore. ' '

"Can you beat that?" Teddy Blue inquires. "It was
what she was. I was never so disgusted in my life." 8

CHAPTER VII

TOM SMITH, TOWN TAMER

I IHE SEASON of 1870 opened in spec-

n r tacular fashion. Cattle prices were up

LJ again, not as high as they had been

during the runaway weeks of the previous summer, but

substantial. Breaking all past records, the first herds

reached Abilene no later than May 1. The Lone Star men

found the market lively and it was confidently predicted

that 1870 would top everything that had gone before.

It was a prediction that was borne out. Half a million
Longhorn cattle reached the Kansas prairies that year.

The early arrival of the Texans found the calaboose not
yet finished. Had it been built elsewhere it might only have
amused them, but putting it there on Texas Street, where
they had to look at it every time they hurried from one
saloon to the next, was a damned Yankee insult they didn't
intend to tolerate. As for the signs that had been posted,
telling a man he couldn 't pack a gun in Abilene, they either
tore them down or shot them full of holes. On the second
night in town, having generated a good head of steam, as
well as reinforcements, they went to work on the jail, tear
ing off the wooden roof and pulling down one of its walls.

Mayor Henry ordered the jail rebuilt. The new roof was
bolted down and the building put under armed guard night

68

TOM SMITH, TOWN TAMER 69

and day. The Texans turned their ire on him. A group of
them galloped out Railroad Street, where Henry's office
was located, shot it full of holes and raced on to the stock
yards.

Tom Sheran, the grocer, who also happened to be the
sheriff of Dickinson County, reluctantly had accepted the
post of town marshal. He didn't have too much difficulty
collecting the license money from the saloons and dives,
but he could do nothing about curbing the wildness of
the visitors. He suddenly turned in his badge, evidently
figuring that he had enough to do without being respon
sible for the peace of the town. Jim McDonald, his deputy,
took his place. He didn't last as long as Sheran. His future
conduct certainly marked him as an arrant coward and
being completely unfitted for the job.

The mayor and his trustees began to realize that it was
going to take a strong man to tame Abilene. Henry wrote
the St. Louis Police Department asking the chief to send
him two competent men. In response to his request two
highly recommended ex-soldiers arrived in Abilene. The
Texans knew why the strangers were there and put on an
exhibition for their benefit. It convinced the St. Louisans.
They took the next train back East without stopping to
say good-by.

Out in the little town of Kit Carson, Colorado,
"Bear River" Tom Smith heard that Abilene was look
ing for a marshal. Unannounced, he rode into Abilene on
Silverheels, his big gray horse, and presented himself to
the Mayor. The Bear Eiver, "Wyoming, riot was almost
as celebrated as the Wild Bill-McCanles affair at Eock
Creek. In 1867, while the Union Pacific was being built,
Smith was employed by one of the construction companies.
Construction workers were fair game for the jackals
who were slapping up little towns as the rails advanced.
A young friend of Smith's was thrown into jail with three

70 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

vicious murderers on a trumped-up charge of having
disturbed the peace. After trying to get the boy released
Smith and his fellow workers descended on the town,
fought a gang of bogus vigilantes to a standstill, and freed
the youngster. Badly wounded, Smith had been forced to
remain behind as the construction advanced. When he re*
covered, the motives and conduct he had exhibited in the
Bear River riot had been such that he was chosen marshal
of the next town and the next as the railhead moved west
ward and old towns were abandoned for new ones along
the right of way.

This, then, was the man who had come to Abilene seek
ing to become its first full-time marshal. There seems to be
only one photograph in existence of Tom Smith. It has
been reprinted many times. The character of the man can
be seen in his strong face. But there is an even more en
lightening picture of him in the letters of Mayor Henry.

"Tom Smith was a fine looking, broad shouldered, ath
letic man about five feet eleven inches in height, who tipped
the scales at 170 pounds, stood erect, had grayish blue
eyes, auburn hair and light mustache. He was gentle in
manners, low-toned in speech, deferential in the presence
of official superiors, and brave beyond question. He de
serves first place in the gallery of frontier marshals. " l

Thomas James Smith was born in New York City in
1840, of Irish parents. That he was a member of the
New York Police Department is fairly certain. Other
than that very little is known of his early years. Mayor
Henry found him strangely reticent about his life in
New York, and though Henry was in daily contact with
him for months, he never learned why Tom Smith had left
friends and home to spend his remaining years on the
frontier. Eomantically, Henry suggests that it could have
been some tragedy or unhappy love affair.

"He was fairly well educated, reared a Catholic, and

TOM SMITH, TOWN TAMER 71

was clean of speech," says he. "I never heard him utter
a profane word or employ a vulgar phrase. He neither
gambled, drank, nor was in the least dissolute otherwise.
I cannot learn that he ever mentioned his family ; nor was
it ever known that he had any living relatives. It is nearly
authenticated that he was a victim in the Mountain Mead
ows massacre, in Utah, 1857, and left for dead. Certainly,
a little later he was in western Utah and Nevada. ' ' 2

The myth that WMJMU Hickok tamed Abilen, that it
was "his town, " has had a wide circulation for years. The
known facts and an unprejudiced study of the records
completely refute that story. Tom Smith tam^ci Abilene.
When Wild Bill, who succeeded him, took over, the back-
b7me of uncurbed lawlessness had been broken.

Hickok enthusiasts would Have us believe that he ruled
Abilene with an iron hand, killed dozens of men actually
he killed only two in the eight months he served as
marshal, and one of those a friend, shot down by accident.
If an iron hand ever ruled Abilene it belonged to Tom
Smith, unpublicized and almost forgotten. Hickok brought
to Abilene his fabulous, and fabled, reputation as the
Prince of Pistoleers, credited with the slaying of fifty or
more men, the number depending on who was doing the
lelling. In Abilene his chief and principal weapon was his
fearsome reputation. Tom Smith left him a town that was
thoroughly whipped. If it threatened to get away from
Hickok on more than one occasion, it was largely because
the latter made no determined effort to enforce to the
letter the deadly-weapon ordinance as well as others.

Henry has recalled his first meeting with Tom Smith.
It followed by several days an early-morning raid on
the calaboose by a score of Texans, resulting in its first
prisoner being freed, a Negro cook for one of the outfits
camped on the prairie. A man named Bobbins, serving
temporarily as town policeman, had jailed the cook for

72 WILD, WOOLLY A23D WICKED

shooting out a street light and otherwise disturbing the
peace. When the Texans reached the calaboose in the early
morning, they shot off the lock and hurried the prisoner
out of town, which was something of a switch, white Tex
ans rescuing what they universally, and contemptuously,
called a * ' Nigger. ' '

Having freed the cook, they ordered the stores to close
and began racing through the streets, their guns bucking.
They gave the mayor's office another going over. It was
deserted at that early hour, and they amused themselves
by tearing down the curtains and committing other acts of
vandalism. They rode back to Texas Street then and for
an hour had the town petrified.

Expecting his office to be attacked a second time,
Henry gathered a dozen armed men and f orted up inside.
But the Texans had had enough and roared out of town
triumphantly.

From the foregoing it can be gathered that the mayor,
when he learned his visitor's identity, was pleased to see
him. But, knowing the temper of the Texans, he can be
excused for doubting that Smith, or any man, could bring
Abilene to heel.

"You better look the town over," Henry says he ad
vised. "You may change your mind about wanting the job
of marshal. "

"I've looked it over/' Smith replied leisurely. "It's
about what I expected."

"Then you'll take the job? You think you can control
the town?"

"That's what I'm here for, Mr* Henry. I believe I can
control it."

The Board of Trustees met with the mayor that aftr-
noon* Smith was hired as marshal for one month at a
salary of a hundred fifty dollars, with the further provi
sion that he was to be paid an additional two dollars for

TOM SMITH, TOWN TAMEE 73

every arrest. There were no other cow towns in Kansas at
the time ; Abilene was the first. Whether Tom Smith was
being well paid or not can be judged by comparing his
salary with the sixty dollars a month that Wichita paid
Wyatt Earp in the year he was a policeman there.

Tom Smith was an entirely new type of peace officer*
Other marshals walked; night and day he patroled the
streets on horseback. Beneath his coat, in shoulder hol
sters, he carried a brace of pistols, but he didn't display
them in order to throw fear into the men with whom he
had to deal. Only in a limited sense was he a gun marshal ;
he won his fights and maintained order with his fists. The
Texans didn't know what to make of it. As one of them
said: "We don't know no more about fist fightin' than
a hog knows about a sidesaddle.' 5

Smith 's first act was to have new signs put up prohibit
ing the carrying of guns. Some were torn down, others
defaced. Catching a cowpuncher in the act, he leaped off
his horse and knocked the man cold. Throwing him over
his shoulder, he deposited the offender in the pokey. After
that had happened three or four times, the signs began to
stay up. He enlisted and got the support of merchants and
saloonkeepers* The argument he advanced to them made
sense. They all wanted more business* The best way to get
it was to have their customers park their guns when they
hit town and reclaim them when they left* Needless gun-
fighting helped nobody.

Grunracks were placed in the hotels, leading saloons, and
stores. There were some, of course, who didn't think the
no-gun law applied to them* On the first Saturday night
after he began policing Abilene he was accosted by a cow
boy desperado known as "Big Hank." The town was over
flowing with Texans, and they were watching, for Big
Hank had boasted that no man was going to disarm him.

74 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

"What are you going to do about that gun ordinance V 9
he demanded of the marshal, according to Mayor Henry, 8

"See that it is enforced; I'll trouble you to hand me
yours. "

With a coarse oath this was refused. Characteristically
cool, Smith again made the demand and again was met
with profanity and abuse. Instantly he sprang forward
and landed a terrific blow on Big Hank's jaw. The marshal
grabbed the pistol and when the man got to his feet
ordered him to leave for his camp at once, a command
that was heeded with crestfallen alacrity.

The news of this encounter was heralded over a range
of many miles. The unique punishment employed was
wholly new to cowboy warfare. In a camp out on a branch
of Chapman Creek, a wager was laid by a big burly brute
that he could go to town and defy a demand to hand over
his gun. On Sunday morning this Wyoming Frank was
in Abilene to make good his boast.

The marshal was late in putting in an appearance,
leading the bully to announce that the lawman knew he
was waiting for him and had "lit out." Presently, how
ever, Smith came riding leisurely down the middle of the
street, as was his habit. Seeing the man's gun prominently
displayed and knowing what it meant, he slipped out of
the saddle.

The bully began abusing him at once, to use it as an
excuse for not surrendering his gun. Smith asked him
for it and was, of course, refused. Somewhat daunted by
the steely glitter in the marshal's eyes, Wyoming Frank
backed off a step. The marshal followed him up. One
backward step led to another and carried them through
the open doors of the Lone Star saloon. The place was
crowded even though it was a Sunday morning. With the
onlookers gathered around, the big cowboy tried to draw,
but Smith was too close to him to give him any arm room.

TOM SMITH, TOWN TAMER 75

The next thing Wyoming Frank knew he was on the floor.
The marshal took the man's six-gun and gave him a
pistol whipping that laid his head open. "I'm giving you
five minutes to get out of town, and don't ever let me set
eyes on you again," said Marshal Smith.

Texas Abilene was almost convinced that it had met its
master. A few nights later the marshal walked into the
Old Fruit saloon, one of the cheaper, rowdier places, to
arrest a cowboy for an infraction of one of the ordinances.
The saloon was crowded with the offender's friends. He
retreated to the rear, from which there was no exit. The
men lined up at the bar made a solid row. The others
dropped back a step or two and made a row on the op
posite side of the saloon. Smith drew a pistol from a
shoulder holster, sweeping it from side to side and keep
ing everybody covered.

The Old Fruit was lighted by three hanging oil lamps.
A cowboy reached up and lifted one from its bracket and
hurled it at the marshal. It crashed at his feet and the
flames shot up. But it failed to explode. Kicking it aside,
Smith collared his man and after stiffening him with a
hard right to the jaw, flung him over his shoulder and
carried him across the street to the jail.

Shots had been fired in the saloon. Two punchers
claimed they had taken dead aim on the marshal. He
came out of the fracas unscathed, nevertheless. It gave
rise to the ridiculous story that he was invulnerable be
cause he wore a steel vest. But his iron will and iron
fists had convinced the Texans that law had come to
Abilene. The town remained wide-open and there were
minor outbreaks of violence, but the old days were gone.
In the red-light district two women fought and one was
killed. Marshal Smith made the girls hand over their
derringers. Henry says he collected a basketful.

McDonald and Bobbins were back on the police force

76 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

as deputies, but their duties were largely confined to
collecting license fees and escorting prisoners from the
jail to the courtroom. If Abilene had become a safe place
in which to live, the credit belonged to Tom Smith.

The Board of Trustees built a little office for him
adjacent to the mayor's, and on August 9 they voted to
increase his salary to $225 per month, retroactive to
July 4.

For courage, bravery, and iron will there was never
another frontier peace officer like him. He conquered
Abilene and did it without any killings. The Texans re
spected him almost from the first, and thougT they
bitterly denounced such Kansas marshals as WildJBiU,
the Earps, and ^hf Master sons and others as the " fighting
pimps/' they never included Tom Smith in that category.

CHAPTER

ABILENE LOSES ITS MARSHAL

r"|HERE IS no doubt about when the
nrthe rift that had developed between
LJ Theodore Henry and Joe McCoy
reached a definite parting of the ways. It has to be left to
conjecture as to when they first realized that the goal
each had in mind was in such bitter conflict that ultimately
neither could be achieved short of destroying the other.
However, it seems safe to say that it must have become
apparent soon after Henry settled in Abilene. Though he
busied himself exclusively with buying and selling land
for three years, he was at heart an agriculturist, some
thing McCoy never was.

The latter had fathered the Texas cattle trade, and even
in adversity he had no dream other than to see the miles
of undulating prairies of Dickinson and the adjacent
counties to the south and west made a permanent grazing
country for the accommodation of Texas cattle. It seems
never to have occurred to him that new railroads, some
just projected and others already building, would in a
few years utterly change the map of Kansas and make
the cattle trade a shifting, temporary business.

Though some time later, following the great grass
hopper invasions that devastated Kansas, T. C. Henry

77

78 WELD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

became the leading apostle for developing a domestic live
stock business, that was years after he had had thousands
of acres of prairie sod turned under and the land put to
wheat.

Obviously there was a basic conflict of interest between
the two men. That the prairies could be farmed extensively
and profitably had not been demonstrated up to and in
cluding the late '60's. This is not to say that crops of the
hard grains had not been produced. In the main they came
from the rich bottom lands of the Smoky Hill Eiver and
its numerous creeks. The upland soil was excellent, but it
was a land of scant rainfall and scorching-hot winds. As
late as 1870 there was little proof that the open prairies
could be successfully farmed.

Though no less an authority than Professor James C.
Malin, of the University of Kansas, in his exhaustive
articles in the Kansas State Historical Society Quarterly
on the "Beginnings of Winter Wheat Production in the
Upper Kansas and Lower Smoky Hill Valleys," scoffs
at the pretensions of Stuart Henry that his brother T, C.
Henry's experiment with winter wheat led to the dis
covery that the prairies could be "winter farmed/' he
acknowledges that it was largely spring wheat, not winter
wheat, that was being sown. 1 The evidence he marshals
that winter wheat was grown successfully as early as
1866, which was prior to Henry's arrival in Kansas,
cannot be doubted even if the citations he gives are
widely scattered and fail to state how many bushels were
harvested.

In passing, it should be said that Mayor Henry never
claimed to be the first to plant winter wheat and make a
crop ; that story was born out of the youthful enthusiasm
of his brother, who wrote that T.C., being impressed by
the success of Minnesota winter-wheat farming, wondered
if the Kansas prairies wouldn't do as well. With that in

ABILENE LOSES ITS MARSHAL 79

mind he put in five acres in October in a secluded piece of
bottom land. To quote Stuart Henry: "He told no one
about it. He cautioned our family to keep quiet about it.
He did not like to be ridiculed for the attempt. He did not
relish being called crazy . . . About the first of July, 1871,
the secret five acres of winter wheat on the river bottom
turned out well. It proved to be the epochal event for the
plains . . . Henry sowed several hundred acres to winter
wheat on valley lands in that fall of 1871 and commenced
confidently to advertise the news of his discovery locally
and in the East."

To call it "epochal" and a " disco very" was unfor
tunate, for it was neither. Malin dismisses it as an attrac
tive human-interest story. "That [it] is contrary to all
canons of reasonableness as well as to historical facts
seems to make little difference once repetition has accom
plished its acceptance." 2

But, led astray by an article concerning his agricultural
activities that Henry prepared for the Kansas State His
torical Collections in 1904, in which he states that they
began in 1873, Malin makes the mistake of jumping to the
conclusion that the five-acre plot of 1870 and the two
hundred acres of 1871 were just fiction.

He fails to take into consideration that a man looking
back on his vast operations, after a lapse of twenty-five
years, would hardly consider that first piddling five-acre
plot or the two hundred acres of the following year as the
beginning of his climb to the title of Wheat King of
Kansas. And his holdings were vast. His famous Golden
Belt farm, extending along the right of way of the Kansas
Pacific from the Abilene stockyards to Detroit, Kansas,
the largest wheat farm in the United States, five thousand
acres, formed only a small part of his holdings ; either by
himself or in partnership with others, he must have con-

80 WILD, WOOLLY A3SD WICKED

trolled up to seventy thousand acres of prairie land at
one time.

It is more than likely that the real purpose of Henry's
first ventures with winter wheat was to provide him with
something to show his potential land customers. He was,
as Malin says, a speculator, as much so as McCoy, He
ran his farms from his real estate office and put experi
enced men on them on a profit-sharing basis. But though
he was a promoter, his ideas on agriculture were sound.
"He did not misrepresent the fundamental of climate, and
he was sound on his insistence that agriculture must be
adapted to environment rather than the reverse," says
Malin. 8

That Dickinson County farmers, or grangers, if you
will, were becoming numerous and getting a foothold is
found in the fact that the first Dickinson County fair was
held that fall of 1870. The mayor was the principal
speaker.

Before the cattle season of '70 was over, Abilene gave
further proof that it might amount to something when
its first newspaper, the Abilene Chronicle, began publica
tion. All through the summer the Texas outfits had re
ported more and more trouble with the grangers and
barbed wire. When they found fences blocking the way,
they knocked them down. The Chronicle took up the cause
of the grangers and campaigned for a new herd law ; that
instead of farmers fencing livestock out of their fields
under the fence law of 1868, the stockmen should be com
pelled to fence their animals in or herd them, and be liable
for all damages done to fields and crops irrespective of
fences.

It marked the beginning of the first real fight against
Texas cattle. Kansas got a new herd law in 1871. It ap
plied only to certain counties, of which Dickinson was
one. It favored the farmer. The following year even

ABILENE LOSES ITS MARSHAL 81

sharper teeth were put into it. McCoy saw it as a grave
mistake that ultimately would drive the Texas cattle
trade away from Abilene.

In mid-October the last of Texans were gone and the
annual exodus of the undesirables, male and female,
began. Marshal Smith relaxed as the town grew quiet.
To save money, he was relieved of his deputies. McDonald
caught on as deputy sheriff. It was to lead to tragedy.

Many accounts have been given of what followed the
killing on Sunday, October 23, 1870, of John Shea, a
farmer, on Chapman Creek, three miles east of town, and
they contain many contradictions. The best of them ap
peared in the Abilene Chronicle, by J. B. Edwards, a man
who was usually careful with his facts in the many com
munications that appeared over his name in the news
papers of Kansas, However, he is in error in stating
that Tom Smith was then a deputy U.S. marshal, as well
as marshal of Abilene. A search of the records of the
Department of Justice does not show that he ever" received
such an appointment. Regarding what occurred on Sun
day, October 23, and during the interval leading up to
Wednesday, November 2, when Marshal Smith became
involved in the matter, all commentators are in agreement.

Andrew McConnell, a Scotsman living in a dugout on
Chapman Creek, had been out deer hunting. When he re
turned home, he found several cows (not Texas cattle)
belonging to his neighbor, John Shea, trespassing on his
unfenced land. McConnell 's friend Moses Miles, also a
Scot, had come over from his nearby claim and was a
witness to the argument that followed between Shea and
McConnell. He testified that Shea snapped a pistol twice
at McConnell and while attempting to cock it a third time
McConnell shot and killed him. An investigation resulted
in the discharge of McConnell on the plea of self-defense.
But the neighbors were not satisfied. Evidence was pre-

82 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

sented contradicting Moses Miles 9 a testimony and a war
rant for the arrest of McConnell was handed Sheriff
Joseph Cramer.

Miles and McConnell took refuge in the latter 's dugout,
and when Sheriff Cramer and his deputy McDonald ap
peared, they drove the two officers off the place. The latter
returned to town.

Whether the idea of appealing to Marshal Smith for
aid in arresting the two men originated with Sheriff
Cramer or McDonald is not known, but it was McDonald
who asked Smith to return to Chapman Creek with them.
The marshal was under no compulsion to assist in making
an arrest in connection with a crime that had occurred
three miles or more beyond the town limits and therefore
out of his jurisdiction. But he volunteered to go. At the
last moment the sheriff conveniently found something else
demanding his immediate attention and did not accompany
the marshal and McDonald. Both were armed, of course.

On reaching the dugout they tethered their horses.
Miles was chopping wood a few yards away. McConnell
was inside. Smith went in at once, paying no attention
to McConnelPs warning not to enter. Miles snapped a
carbine at McDonald, though it failed to fire ; McDonald
backed away. J. B. Edwards, Abilene 's local historian,
says : " Miles kept trying to get his gun to go off, but it
persistently refused to do so, and yet McDonald was so
much afraid of a gun, even of that kind, that he made no
effort in any way to get in where Smith was. No one
except McConnell and Tom Smith were in the dugout
when a shot was fired inside. As quick as McDonald heard
it he took to his heels and fled across the prairies. Leaving
his horse where he had tied him, he made for the nearest
claim, one-half mile or more west, and, finding a pony,
mounted him and came to Abilene as fast as possible, re
porting that Smith was killed. In a very few minutes a

ABILENE LOSES ITS MAKSHAL 83

posse (including myself) was off for the scene of the
conflict. On arriving there we found Smith's body lying
some ten yards from the dugout with his head severed
from the body excepting the skin on the back of the neck.
McConnell and Miles had fled." 4

No one knows what happened in the dugout, but W. D.
Stambaugh, who reached the scene ahead of the posse,
throws some light on it.

"Two shots were heard. MeConnell was shot through
the hand, Smith in the breast. They grappled and
struggled into the open air, Smith with a mortal wound,
giving McConnell a fearful battle. Smith got McConnell
down and was either getting the handcuffs out of 'his
pocket or attempting to put them on his prisoner when
Miles, who was McConnell 's partner, came up behind
and, taking an ax, buried its blade in Smith's head, strik
ing three blows and almost severing the head from the
body." 5

Abilene was stunned. Feeling ran high against Sheriff
Cramer and Deputy Sheriff McDonald. Judge Kuney and
James Gainsford, who were with the posse, took up the
pursuit of McConnell and Miles and continued on the
trail, traveling day and night until the two men were
captured on Saturday morning, just before sunrise, some
fifteen miles northwest of Clay Center, on the Republican
Eiver, in Clay County. By telegraph from Junction City,
Abilene was informed that the prisoners were being
brought to town on the Sunday-morning train. A great
crowd gathered and threats of lynching were heard.
McConnell and Miles were placed under continuous guard
on the second floor of the courthouse. They were bound
over, charged with murder, but when an unprejudiced
jury could not be impaneled, the court granted a change
of venue to Eiley County, and the prisoners were taken
to the Manhattan jail.

84 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

They were tried, found guilty, and sentenced to long
prison terms rather than death, which failed to satisfy
the outraged citizens of Abilene.

Frontier Abilene never again witnessed such an out
pouring of grief as was occasioned by the death of
Marshal Tom Smith* The whole town turned out for the
funeral. The services were held in the little frame Baptist
church at half -past ten in the morning. When they were
completed, the funeral procession moved to the graveyard.

"I recall it all vividly, " says Stuart Henry. "Behind
the hearse, banked with branches and flowers, walked the
dead marshal's iron-gray horse, Silverheels, saddled and
bridled as he had left it, Tom's pearl-handled brace of
revolvers, presented to him by the community, hung in
their holsters from the pommel. Crepe fluttered from
hats, arms, bosoms. All proceeded on foot to do their
highest and humblest honors to their revered protector.
The file of people wound through Texas Street where the
marshal had patroled in such local prominence. Then
across the railroad track, the line trailed through the
north or civilian part of the straggling village. Finally
the concourse mounted the gentle slope of the hill on
whose breast, upraised to the sky, spread the small prairie
grass cemetery/' 6

It was a simple grave, surrounded by a low picket fence,
with an ornamented board for a headstone. As the years
marched forward and the ranks of the old-timers thinned
out and Abilene became a thriving city, giving little
thought to its early history, the grave was neglected and
the man who lay there was all but forgotten but not
quite. In 1904, J. B. Edwards had the remains removed
to a new and better location, donated by the city, where
a huge boulder of Oklahoma granite, secured by Edwards,
was erected as a lasting monument to Tom Smith. "With
fitting ceremonies it was dedicated on Decoration Bay,

ABILENE LOSES ITS MARSHAL 85

1904. T. C. Henry came from his home in Colorado to
deliver the principal address. Other old-timers from days
that were gone were present.

On the monument is a bronze plaque :

THOMAS J. SMITH

MARSH AT, OF ABILENE, 187O
DIED A MARTYR TO DUTY NOV. 2, 187O
A FEARLESS HERO OF FRONTIER BAYS

WHO IN COWBOY CHAOS
ESTABLISHED THE SUPREMACY OF THE LAW.

With the dawn of 1871 the Abilene Chronicle boasted
that the town now had a population of over five hundred,
and predicted that the number would double in a year.
It was a typical " boomer" newspaper. The claims it
made for the prosperity and rosy future of Dickinson
County farmers were exaggerated. All over Kansas local
papers were doing the same in a frantic bid to attract
settlers.

It made fascinating reading when it fell into the hands
of prospective immigrants and racial and religious groups
of possible colonists. The mayor saw to it that many copies
of the Chronicle were broadcast on fertile ground. The
columns of the paper always seemed to be open to him
and his agricultural theories got wide and favorable
attention, which wasn't strange, for, though the fact was
shrouded in secrecy, he and Jim Shane, his partner, were
part owners of the Chronicle.

Their business was growing so rapidly that it came as
no surprise when Henry announced that he would not
stand for re-election. Men who were interested in keeping
the cattle trade in Abilene put up Joe McCoy as a candi
date to replace him. McCoy was by now little more than
a figurehead as far as that business was concerned, but

86 WILD, WOOLLY A3H> WICKED

he was a stockman, and if elected would favor that element
at the expense of the farmer* That was not the way Henry
wanted things to go. Though Henry campaigned against
him, McCoy was elected. His immediate problem was to
find a marshal to replace Tom Smith. Two local men,
hired on a month-to-month basis, were policing Abilene,
but the town couldn't be left to them, once the cattle season
began.

Wild Bill Hickok dropped off a train and took up his
headquarters in the Alamo saloon. He was fresh from
Hays City where, briefly, he had served as marshal of the
town, also as sheriff of Ellis County. The Abilene Board
of Trustees was acquainted with his bloody record in
Hays, where he was known to have killed four men. Some
stories placed the number as high as seven or eight.
Hickok was available, but did Abilene want to take a
backward step and be ruled by the kind of gun law that
he represented?

The Board stood divided, and the new mayor joined
those members who opposed offering the job to Wild Bill.
Without anything being done, it got to be April 15. The
saloon crowd began to put in an appearance. Doors were
opened and everything refurbished and made ready for
the expected bonanza. The gamblers and assorted des
peradoes followed, and with them came the whores.
Whether the recalcitrant members of the Board and
Mayor McCoy were suddenly frightened by what they
saw ahead of them is not clear. But everyone was sud
denly in agreement about Hickok being the man the town
needed.

McCoy sent for him and he was hired at $150 a month,
plus a share of the fines that were levied.

Stuart Lake in his Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal says
that Hickok was in Kansas City when McCoy sent for him.

ABILENE LOSES ITS MAESHAL 87

Whether that statement originated with Earp or Ms
biographer is immaterial. One or both were wrong. Hickok
had been in Abilene for weeks when Mayor McCoy called
him to his office in the courthouse.

CHAPTER IX

WIUD BELL TAKES OVER

JE CAME out of Ben Thompson's
Bull's Head saloon. He wore a low-
crowned, wide black hat and a frock
coat. Bis hair was yellow and it hung down to his'
shoulders. When I came along the street he was standing
there with his back to the wall and his thumbs hooked in
his red sash. He stood there and rolled his head from side
to side looking at everything and everybody from under
his eyebrows just like a mad old bull." l

That was the way Brown Paschal, an old-time Texas
puncher, saw him when he came to Abilene with a trail
herd and got his first glimpse of Wild Bill Hickok, the
new marshal, whose reputation as the Prince of Pistoleers
and wizard of the lightning-fast draw had reached as far
as the brasada of south Texas. His six-guns were so cov
ered with " credits" that he had lost count of them.

In all the mass of literature about Wild Bill no better
picture of "Mm can be found. It was the image of In-m that
all but a very few men carried in their minds for seventy
years. He had exchanged the fringed buckskins of his
earlier days for a frock coat and spotless linen, but for
thousands of Americans he was the Wild West, its living
symbol, all its deeds of daring, its dead-shots, its heroes

WILD BELL TAKES OVER 89

merged into one personality. In comparison with him his
friend Buffalo Bill Cody did not rate being mentioned in
the same breath.

This narrative's interest in James Butler Hickokmust
be confined to the reputation he brought to Abilene and
what he did there. To do that and give it meaning, some
thing must be said briefly of his background. He was born
in La Salle County, Illinois, May 27, 1837. He was in
Kansas when he was eighteen and was swept into the vio
lence of her struggle with the Border Kuffians. That the
night-riding and bloodshed were very much to his liking
can hardly be doubted. It set the pattern he was to follow
for the rest of his adventurous life. He became bodyguard
for General Lane during the Free-State war and later,
constable of Monticello Township, in Johnson County.
After that he was in turn stage driver to Sante Fe ; Army
scout, operating in Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma; In
dian scout ; buffalo hunter ; deputy marshal at Fort Biley,
engaged in rounding up deserters and horse thieves ; mar
shal of Hays City and sheriff of Ellis County.

Fabulous tales grew up about him, none of which he
ever troubled to deny. He must have been an excellent
frontiersman, for his services were always in demand by
the military, especially by General Hancock and General
(Lieutenant Colonel) George Armstrong Custer. Of his
proficiency with the six-shooter there can be no question.
That he killed between thirty and forty men can be
doubted. It has been said that there were two "Wild Bills.
Actually the change that took place, when he put his scout
ing days behind him and became a peace officer, was a
superficial one. He had always exhibited an abundance of
personal vanity. If in his role of town marshal he became
a dandy, with his frilled shirts and expensive attire, it was
strictly in character. Women were his weakness, and of his
known killings many were due to his affairs with one or

90 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

another of the Cyprian Sisterhood, There is no evidence
that he was ever seriously concerned with any of them, and
that includes the widow of Old Man Lake, the circus man.
He married her in Cheyenne, in 1876. Like so many other
rutting males, he seemed to find a distinct advantage in
endless variety.

A great mass of nonsense has been written about Hickok.
Much of it becomes sheer myth when carefully examined.
It began with Colonel George Ward Nichols' fantastically
inaccurate articles in Harper's Weekly, concerning the
notorious affair at the Bock Creek, Nebraska, stage sta
tion of the Overland Express, on July 12, 1861. For half
a century and more Nichols' articles, portraying Hickok,
set the pattern of the country's thinking about him. He
wasn't known as Wild Bill at the time of the Rock Creek
incident ; that came later when he ran a gang of roughs
through the square at Independence, Kansas, and a woman
in the crowd cried: "Good for you, Wild Bill!" Hickok
adopted the name and it soon became his trademark as
the gallant defender of company property who, single-
handed, with knife and gun had driven off a gang of
. thieves and desperadoes, among them the former owner of
the station, killing three.

Eugene Cunningham was the first writer of consequence
to attack that tale and prove it to be completely untrue.
He was assailed by the pro-Hickok faction, but truth was
beginning to catch up with fiction. The mounting evidence
made it difficult for even the I^kok <^^
that McCanles, the erstwhile owner of the station r James
Woods, a cousin, and a man named (>Qr4on v a.McCanles
employee, were J^Uj^^urd^^dJi^t is such a widely held
conclusion today, among the informed, that recent Hickok
biographers offer very little in rebuttal.

Eock Creek was almost ten years behind Hickok when
he became marshal of Hays City. Prior to the arrival of

WILD BILL TAKES OVER 91

the Kansas Pacific Eailroad in October 1867, what was to
become Hays City consisted of two saloons and a trading
post, lying safely in the shadow of Fort Hays. It was
located on the Jones and Plummer Trail, or Western
Trail, as it came to be called, and provided a convenient
stopping place where Texans, bound north to Ogallala,
Nebraska, with cattle, and Government freighters off the
Santa Fe Trail, could find rough comfort and dissipation.
With the coming of the railroad Hays City was born.
It grew rapidly. During the Indian uprising of '68 it was
in the center of the trouble, but saved from incursions by
the nearness of the fort. Though thousands of Texas
Longhorns went through Hays City, it was never, in the
way that Abilene, Ellsworth, Newton, Wichita, Caldwell,
and Dodge City were, an integral part of the Texas cattle
trade.

Of the cattle that went up the Jones and Plummer Trail,
a great share was stock cattle, destined to populate the
ranges of faraway Wyoming and eastern Montana. Beeves
were put aboard the Union Pacific cars and shipped east.
Long after Abilene and the other Kansas cow towns had
faded, Hays City continued to wallow in the dust that
passing herds kicked up. Dozens of cowboys who took them
north never returned, for when a northern stockman
bought a herd of Longhorns in Ogallala, he did his best to
induce the crew that had brought them that far to hire out
to him, offering higher wages and better grub than they
were used to. By the middle 70 's several hundred thou
sand head of Texas Longhorns and scores of Texas cow
boys roamed the plains of Montana, east of Judith Basin,
the Powder, Tongue and Yellowstone Eiver country of
Wyoming and all of western Dakota. Ninety-five per cent
of them had been funneled north through Ogallala. The
Olive brothers, Print, Marion, Bob, and Ira, always had
two or three herds plodding up the Jones and Plummer

92 WILD, WOOLLY A2STD WICKED

Trail. And they all stopped at Hays City. There the Tex-
ans ran into Yankee soldiers from the fort, Army team
sters, and Yankee buffalo hunters. When they collided,
which was often, the thud could be heard a long way.

Hays City was never as big as Abilene and Dodge, but
for what there was of it, it was just as tough. Ellis County
was organized in 1869 and Hays City became the county
seat. (Outside of Hays there was very little to Ellis
County.) A man who could police the town and keep some
degree of peace, as well as keep an eye on the county, was
needed. From Fort Hays, General Custer, the comman
dant, recommended his favorite scout and friend Wild Bill
Hickok.

Hickok was appointed, and a few weeks later was
" elected " sheriff of Ellis County. An election was not
then the formal affair it is today, but, time and place con
sidered, it sufficed.

Hickok has been pictured as a walking arsenal as he
patrolled Hays City. One writer of some distinction credits
him with carrying a brace of pistols, a sawed-off shotgun,
and a bowie knife. The evidence proves that he never car
ried a sawed-off shotgun until immediately after he In lied
Phil Coe, in Abilene, some months later.

Some sources say Hickok killed five men in his brief
tenure of office as marshal of Hays City. Definitely he
killed three. It was always his code, expressed by Tirm more
than once, to shoot straight and shoot first. He had his
badge to protect him against the consequences of what he
did. And by now he had his reputation as the steely-eyed
killer with lightning-like draw to sustain. His fame was
spreading all over Kansas and beyond. Fantastic tales
were told about his prowess with a six-gun, of the scores
of men, red and white, he had killed as an Army scout.
None was too incredible for belief. He accepted the adula
tion as his due, without strutting or boasting. He loved the

WILD BILL TAKES OVEK 93

spotlight, and he knew he was on his way to becoming a
personage.

Two drunks began shooting np the Santa Fe saloon.
Hiekok was sent for. The pair turned pistols on him and
fired as he entered. He is said to have killed both of them.
The killing of a third man several weeks later had a more
personal note. He and Jack Strawhorne (sometimes
spelled Strawhan) were acquainted. Visiting in Ellsworth,
they had met and passed some bitter words. Both returned
by train to Hays City. That evening Strawhorne was
standing at the bar of Tommy Drurmn's saloon when
Hiekok walked in. Thinking the latter had not seen him,
Strawhorne pulled a pistol. The alert Hiekok killed him
before he could squeeze the trigger.

Wild Bill's friendship with General and Mrs. Ouster did
not extend to Captain Tom Ouster, the general's brother,
who had seen a lot of Hiekok and had nothing but contempt
for him, likening him to one of Ned Buntline's super-
melodramatic Wild West heroes. His expressed opinions
got back to Wild Bill, who did nothing about it. Undoubt
edly his amicable relations with the other members of the
Custer family explain why. But when Tom Custer on one
of his periodic bouts with the bottle rode up and down the
street, shooting up the town, Hiekok took him into custody
and got him out of Hays.

What passed between the captain and his brother as a
result of the incident is not known, but Tom Custer 's
bitterness against Hiekok for publicly humiliating him be
came an obsession. He took the view that as an officer of
the IL S. Army he was responsible only to the military
for any transgression he committed. There are conflicting
stories about how many troopers he had with him when he
rode into town to kill Wild Bill. Some say four, others
as many as half a dozen. As usual, they found Hiekok in
Tommy Drumm's place, his favorite haunt. They jumped

94 WILD, WOOLLY A2TO WICKED

him, but lie got Ms gun hand free, and over his shoulder
killed the soldier behind him and then shot and killed one
in front of him. At that point bystanders leaped in and
got Hickok and Ouster apart and then drove the troopers
out of town.

It took very little persuasion to convince Wild Bill of
the wisdom of getting out of Hays City at once. Without
further trouble he got away to Abilene. When asked why
he had fled, he said, laconically : "I couldn't fight the whole
7th Cavalry."

The incident had no repercussions as far as the Army
was concerned. With his brother so deeply involved it can
be surmised that General Custer 's report to General Sher
idan, his departmental commander, was so tailored that
no investigation was deemed necessary.

There were several men in Hays in Hickok 's time who
were to be heard from later on in Dodge City. One was
George Hoover, who, as mayor of Dodge City, was said by
Wyatt Earp to have sent him the much-disputed telegram
reading: "You have cleaned up Wichita. Come over and
clean up Dodge." Another was James H. Kelley, the
saloonkeeper, with his pack of hounds, two of which had
been selected by General Custer from his own pack and
given to Kelley. It won for the affable Kelley the nickname
of "Hound Kelley." In Dodge the sobriquet was changed
to ' ' Bog Kelley. ' ' He was mayor of Dodge City when Dora
Hand was murdered.

There is nothing in the record to show that Hickok was
unduly friendly with either Hoover or Kelley. Very likely
he wasn't, for he never appeared in Dodge, not even as
a visitor.

The site of Hays City's "boot hill" remains. Some esti
mates put the number of men interred there at seventy-
five. This certainly allows for the usual exaggeration. Of

WILD BILL TAKES OVER 95

course, the assumption is that most of those who lie there
died with their boots on.

If Abilene expected Wild Bill to police the town as Tom
Smith had done it quickly learned its mistake. He scarcely
ever left the Alamo to patrol the streets. He expressed his
dissatisfaction with the deputies the town had given him
and had them replaced with a pair more to his liking. One
of them was Tom Carson, a nephew of the famous Kit
Carson. They did his leg work. It gave him time to pursue
his gambling, an interesting if somewhat uncertain means
of complementing the salary the town was paying him.
That Mayor McCoy and the Board of Trustees (now called
the Town Council) had some reservations about Hickok is
revealed in the fact that they were paying him only $150
per month, as compared with the $225 Tom Smith had
received.

The year 1871 was to be Abilene 5 s greatest year as a
cattle market. As cowboys by the hundreds swarmed into
town and Texas Street began to roar, Hickok failed to
make an all-out attempt to enforce the no-gun ordinance.
It remained the law of the town and there were frequent
arrests for violating it. But he clamped down only when it
pleased him to do so. When he was wanted, he had to be
"looked up" at the Alamo.

He was never a frequenter of the Drovers' Cottage. It
was claimed by Charles F. Gross, then hotel clerk, in a
letter published in the Abilene Reflector many years
later, that Frank and Jesse James, with Cole Younger, the
notorious bank and train robbers, had once stayed at the
Cottage, under assumed names, and that Hickok, learning
they were there, had come to the Cottage. Though they
were wanted in several states, on their given word that
they were not in Abilene on "business," he had not
attempted to arrest them. This tale is as suspect as the
one that has Wes Hardin the Texas killer with twenty

96 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

notches on his gun when he rode into Abilene and who
added twenty more before John Selman shot him down in
El Paso using the "road agent's spin" on Wild Bill and
making him talk small.

If Hickok seldom exerted himself beyond stepping from
one resort to the next or turn up the angle of Texas Street
to the cottage he occupied with Susanna Moore, his mis
tress of the moment, he had his fearsome reputation work
ing overtime for him. The run of ordinary cowboys and
two-bit desperadoes walked wide of Bill. They had heard
about Ms basilisk eyes that gleamed like two devils and
held a man helpless while he drew and fired.

Susanna Moore was an old flame and he was playing
a return engagement with her. It was over her that he had
killed Dave Tutt in Springfield, Missouri, in 1865. The
story bears repeating. In Yellville, Arkansas, Tutt's home,
Bill had had an affair with Tutt's sister. It had not inter
fered with their friendship, even when Hickok walked out
on the girl. Later, in Springfield, Susanna Moore, with
whom Hickok had been very well acquainted a few years
previous, came to town. She and Wild Bill picked up where
they had left off, only to have her transfer her affec
tions to Dave Tutt. Each man threatened the other. On
July 21 they clashed in the town square. Tutt, obviously
unimpressed by .Wild Bill's reputation as, a^gunman and
Inffer, caine across the square, pistol drawn until they were
within seventy-five yards of each other. He fired first, and
Hickok, armed with a cap-and-ball dragoon Colt, resting
his gun hand on his left arm to steady it, took careful aim
and shot Tutt through the heart. This was certainly not
an exhibition of the lightning-fast draw he was said to
possess. The law held that he had shot in self-defense,
and the matter ended there. That Susanna was in Abilene,
living with Hickok, is fairly good proof that she bore
no enmity for killing Tutt. 2

WILD BILL TAKES OVER 97

Now that he was in position to exert pressure on the
town, Mayor McCoy closed the old red-light district, north
of the tracks, and had land set aside for the new district
southeast of town. As has been noted, his detractors soon
dubbed it "McCoy's Addition." The Texas Street pimps
and panderers tried to whip up a storm over moving the
district. McCoy called on Wild Bill to silence it and he did.
He was ordered to close the worst of the dance-halls and
give the Novelty Theatre a warning abont its lewd per
formances. That was done. It led McCoy to say:

"Talk about a rule of iron! We had it."

Incredibly, by midsummer of 1871 Abilene had a civilian
population of over eight hundred adults. McCoy had
their backing, and other reform measures followed. All the
dance-halls were closed, as were all crooked games. The
loose women who infested the Abilene House and the Gulf
were run out. It was forbidden to sell alcoholic beverages
in the restricted district.

According to the Chronicle, Hickok is credited with
doing a thorough job. An item in the September 14 issue
reported that "almost every eastbound train has carried
away vast [?] multitudes of sinful humanity. Prostitutes,
pimps, gamblers, cappers and others of like ilk finding
their nefarious vocations no longer remunerative." 8 This
was largely wishful thinking, for the measures taken did
not noticeably improve the moral tone of Texas Street.

However, there were fewer robberies, fewer killings, and
no outbreaks of violence that threatened the safety of the
town. But there was no real peace, and as the days wore
along Abilene continued to simmer. After cleaning up its
entertainment for a week or two, the Novelty Theatre,
around the corner from the Alamo, returned to its old
ways. As a sop to the Town Council, it went to the expense
of hiring a private policeman to keep order. Wild Bill saw
to it that his friend Mike Williams got the job.

98 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

That Hickok had some value as a tourist attraction is
undeniable. People traveling across Kansas got off the
trains to spend a few hours in Abilene and have a look
at him. Belatedly, the Kansas Pacific had shown its con
fidence in the stability of the town by giving it a tiny
passenger depot, painted the bilious green that identified
all company property.

Abilene had other visitors, and they were made of
sterner stuff gun hands from the far reaches of
Texas and the Southwest drawn there as irresistibly by
Hickok 's reputation as the Prince of Pistoleers as flies
are attracted to molasses. Among them was the afore
mentioned John Wesley Hardin, accompanied by his fight
ing cousins and nephews. And from Austin, Texas, came
the redoubtable Ben Thompson, that human bulldog who
never took a backward step for any man and of whom
Bat Masterson wrote, "Ben was the most dangerous killer
in the Old West. The very name of Ben Thompson was
enough to cause the general run of 'man-killers/ even
those who had never seen him, to seek safety in flight. "

Cunningham calls him : " . . . that square-jawed, thickset
Wizard of the Pistol ; that black-haired, blue-eyed Typical
Grunman of the great inky mustache Confederate soldier,
professional gambler, peace officer, and a gunslinger
second to none that Texas ever produced. "

The season of 1871 still, had a long way to go. If Mayor
McCoy exclaimed enthusiastically that Wild Bill ruled
Abilene with a hand of iron and kept it like a church, there
were many, notably the Henry faction and the farm ele
ment, who thought otherwise. " Grave misgivings did they
feel," was one comment. "Bill consorted entirely with
criminals or the lawless. Cheek by jowl with the Texans
and 'bad men,' he lived outside the civil life. The Abilene
civilians regarded him as a desperado . . . Why could or
would Hickok establish a respectable peace while encour
aging the very difficulties he should surmotuit?" 4

CHAPTER X

ABILENE IN ITS TARNISHED CALORY

8'

]N ORDER to arrive at a fair and un
prejudiced evaluation of James Butler
Hickok, the portrait of the super
hero and demigod painted by his devoted adherents
is as unacceptable as the ugly picture of a cowardly
hermaphrodite put together by his detractors. He was
neither one nor the other. The truth lies somewhere in
between.

In some way his enemies have kept alive the myth that
when young Wes Hardin arrived in Abilene, Wild Bill
asked him for his pistols; that Hardin presented them
butts first, keeping an index finger in the trigger guard
of each, and then gave them an upward jerk, his fingers
acting as pivots and the half circle the pistols described
slapping the butts back into his waiting palms, ready to
be fired. This was the well-known "road agent's spin."
Hickok was certainly too experienced to be taken in by
anything like that. Chances are he was as familiar with it
as Hardin.

But the story has it that with the situation now reversed
Wes disarmed Wild Bill and put the ' ' crawF ' on him. For
the several months that he was in and out of town he is
supposed to have strutted about Abilene, fully armed, and
that Hickok looked the other way,

99

100 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

This fanciful tale falls apart when the facts are exam
ined. It is true that young Wes was in and out of Abilene
for the greater part of the '71 shipping season. He had
come up from Texas with a trail herd belonging to Colonel
Wheeler. The outfit reached the North Cottonwood River,
about forty miles south of Abilene, and made camp. This
was early in May. The boss herder, or foreman, was popu
lar Billy Chorn. (Floyd Streeter says the name was spelled
Goran by the Texans, but he does not cite his authority.)
With Hardin were his cousins, Manning, Gip, Jim, and
Joe Clements, as well as his cousins Simp, Bud, and Tom
Dixon. If ever a man had backing, Wes Hardin did. The
Clements boys and the Dixons had cut their eyeteeth on
a six-gun, as the old saying has it. In the two months or
more that the Wheeler herd was held on the North Cotton-
wood, Wes and his cousins took turns riding into Abilene,
two or three at a time. Of his alleged encounter with
Wild Bill we have only his word for it. No witnesses ever
stepped forward to corroborate it

There were a number of warrants out on Hardin. In his
autobiography, published many years later, he says Wild
Bill had requisitions for him that he never attempted to
serve. 1 "But I never knew when Wild Bill would ram one
of them down my throat."

Very likely Hickok was in possession of Texas warrants
calling for the arrest of Wes Hardin. That he made no
attempt to take him into custody is understandable, and in
light of the circumstances reflects no discredit on the mar
shal. There were a score of "wanted" men in Abilene. The
crimes with which they were charged had not been com
mitted there. As long as they behaved themselves while in
town, no one was concerned with what they had done else
where. This was not an attitude peculiar to Abilene; it
was the thinking that prevailed in all the Kansas cow
towns.

ABILENE IN ITS TARNISHED GLORY 101

That Hardin continued to go armed in Abilene, as lie
claimed, is very likely true. And there were others who
did ; Wild Bill made no particular exception of him. The
constant fear of arrest he expresses on recounting his
days in Abilene would seem to indicate that he did very
little strutting. Proof of it came on July 5. Billy Chorn,
the likable boss of Colonel Wheeler's outfit, was killed by
a disgruntled Mexican cowboy by the name of Bideno,
who objected to being transferred to another Wheeler
herd. News of the killing reached Abilene in a few hours.
Chora's body was brought in. The services were held at
the Drovers ' Cottage, with owners and rank-and-file cow
boys turning out en masse.

Hardin was urged to take up the trail of Bideno and
bring him back. He agreed to do it if the town of Abilene
would give him a wararnt and name him a deputy sheriff.
That was done and he left at once.

His reasons for wanting the warrant and being depu
tized seem fairly obvious. That he had no intention of
arresting the Mexican and bringing Mm back alive can be
taken for granted. He meant to kill him. As an officer of
the law he would not have to worry about any repercus
sions. In this there is the tacit, if unconscious, admission
that he realized how shaky his position was in Kansas.

With him went another Texan, Jim Eodgers, and on the
Newton Prairies they were joined by Chorn 's brother and
Hugh Anderson the same Anderson, of Salado, Texas,
who was to figure prominently in a furious gun battle, a
year later, soon after the Santa Fe Railroad established
the raw town of Newton.

Two hundred miles south of Abilene they caught up with
Bideno in Bluff City, a community of half a hundred
people, on Bluff Creek, near the state line. They found
their man in a little restaurant. He attempted to draw a

102 WILD, WOOLLY AEFD WICKED

pistol. That was all the excuse Hardin needed. Firing
across the table, he killed him instantly.

The four men returned to Abilene, where Wes found
himself a hero. A purse totaling six hundred dollars was
presented to him by Texas owners.

When Wes, Ben Thompson, and Wild Bill encountered
one another in Abilene they were meeting for the first
time. Despite anything Wes had to say or wrote in later
years, he does not seem to have borne Hickok any par
ticular enmity. It was not that way with Ben Thompson.
Ben appears to have taken a violent dislike to the long
haired marshal on sight. Several things happened that
turned his dislike into bitter hatred.

If we take Ben's word for it, he was born in 1843, in
Yorkshire, England. This has often been disputed and his
birthplace given as Lockhart, Texas. Still others say it was
somewhere in Nova Scotia and make it 1844. He was either
twenty-eight or twenty-nine when he came to Abilene.
Whichever way it was, they were years of unending vio
lence, for he had a disposition that constantly kept him
embroiled with someone. At the beginning of the Civil
War he had joined a Texas regiment, but before his enlist
ment was up he had to flee to Mexico to escape the conse
quences of killing a sergeant. After killing two or three
Mexicans in Nuevo Laredo he risked returning to Texas.
He re-enlisted and served on the border and proceeded to
break every known military regulation, capping all the
rest by smuggling whiskey to the troops.

That Ben Thompson had killed a dozen men, including
Mexicans and Negroes, became an accepted fact. Though
he had often been arrested, he had never had any really
disastrous brushes with the law until the "reconstruction"
period following the war brought chaos to Texas. Union
authorities convicted him on an old charge of having killed
a desperado named Coombs and sent him to prison for two

ABILENE IK ITS TARSTISHED GLORY 103

years. Ironically, it was one of the rare occasions on which
he had full justification for what he had done. Justification
was never a consideration with Ben.

But though his faults were many and he was seldom out
of hot water, he never ran out of friends. There was some
thing about him, some deep-seated sense of loyalty that
kept men close to him, even though they couldn't condone
his escapades and cold-blooded savagery. Long after he
had put Kansas behind him forever he was elected chief of
police of Austin, the capital of Texas. Instead of settling
down he seemed to lose all sense of restraint. One rampage
followed another. He went to the bottle of tener and stayed
longer until he became an embarrassment to even his
staunchest supporters. To cross him mean facing his
deadly guns. He seemed to bear a charmed life. But his
luck couldn't last forever. It ran out on Tnm completely on
the night of March 11, 1884, in the Vaudeville Variety
Theatre, in San Antonio, and left him and friend King
Fisher, a gun slinger of no mean reputation himself, dead
on the floor, riddled with bullets.

Ben was fresh out of prison when he hit Abilene, and
almost broke. He started gambling. A phenomenal run of
cards netted him a huge stake. His old friend, big, hand
some Phil Coe, the blond gambler from Austin, arrived in
Abilene a few days later. He was plentifully supplied with
money. Pooling their capital, they opened a combination
saloon and gambling resort. This was the storied Bull's
Head. It was in the row in which the Old Fruit and Apple
jack were located. That the partners took over an estab
lished saloon, put in new fixtures and gave it a new name,
though there is no account to that effect, must have been
the case, for they were soon open for business. The build
ing, following the usual pattern, had a false front, giving
it the appearance of being two stories high. In its new
dress the false front bote not only the name of the saloon

104: WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

but the pictured likeness of an old mossy-horn bull, dis
playing its masculinity in pronounced detail.

The Chronicle and civilian Abilene objected violently.
That school children and decent women had to view such
obscenity was not going to be tolerated. It made no differ
ence that similar pictures appeared in all livestock jour
nals ; that bulls were driven through the streets every day
without embarrassing the gentle sex or corrupting their
offspring; the realistic painting that adorned the front of
the Bull's Head had to be altered.

Stuart Henry is in error when he states that a group of
citizens called on the proprietors and appealed to them
to have the offensive feature of the animal painted out.
He is also mistaken as to the year, putting it in '69. The
Town Council instructed Marshal Hickok to see that it was
removed.

Ben Thompson did the talking for himself and his part
ner and, standing on what he called his rights, refused to
do anything about it. Wild Bill's answer was to send a
man up a ladder with a can of paint to black out the bull's
masculine identity. This tampering with art backfired on
its perpetrators, for the paint that had been daubed on no
sooner dried out thoroughly than the original lineaments
of the persecuted bull began to show through enough to
attract more attention than had been bestowed on it in
its pristine ugliness. Eibald Texas Street enjoyed a good
laugh at Wild Bill's expense.

It is not likely that Ben Thompson found anything
amusing in the incident. His toes had been stepped on, and
he wasn't one to overlook an affront of that sort. It almost
makes Wes Hardin's story that Ben tried to get him to
kill Hickok believable. 2 Wes says he told him: "I am not
doing anybody's fighting just now except my own ... If
Bill needs killing, why don't you kill him yourself?"

ABILENE IN ITS TARNISHED GLORY 105

"I would rather get someone else to do it," was Ben's
answer.

Wes Hardin was always a plausible liar and often an
amusing one. His account of how a thief got into his
second-floor room in the American Hotel, a third-rate
rooming house, and made off with his trousers, falls into
the latter category. He had done some shooting, not with
fatal results, he says, but the police, attracted by the shots,
galloped up in a hack, and, to escape them, he leaped to the
roof of the hack, commandeered a pony, and made his way
out to the Wheeler camp on the North Cottonwood, with a
three-man posse hard on his heels. He was ready for them
when they arrived. He had procured a rifle. Getting the
drop, he made them strip to their underwear and sent them
back to Abilene thus attired.

Wes appeared in Wichita two years later, but when he
left Abilene in '71, he never returned.

Thompson and Coe are not generally supposed to have
had a silent partner in the Bull's Head, but it is a matter
of record that the license was transferred to Tom Sheran
soon after the saloon opened. This was the same Tom
Sheran, the grocer, who had served briefly as Abilene 's
marshal and county sheriff. Thompson always said that
the Bull's Head was a "gold mine," and there is every
reason to believe it was.

Old Man Lake's buxom young widow arrived in Abilene
with the Lake circus in the late summer. She evidently took
Wild Bill's eye. He helped her to set up her tent beyond
the Drovers' Cottage and was in daily attendance at the
performances. As for Agnes Lake, she was quoted as
saying that she "fell like a ton of bricks for Wild Bill."
Whether their intimate relations continued, even inter
mittently, during the succeeding five years is not known,
but they were to be resumed in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where

106 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

the circus was in "winter quarters, " and they were mar
ried on March 5, 1876.

It is a substantiated fact that Hickok never clashed with
Ben Thompson. Very likely both realized that they were
so evenly matched, pistol-wise, that neither cared to risk a
showdown. Ben's partner, big six-foot four-inch Phil Coe,
with his full beard and flowing mustache, was not a
gun fighter. The Texans knew him as a man who never
carried a gun, a fact of which Wild Bill could hardly
have been ignorant. That they were bitter enemies was
widely known, and it was only in a left-handed way that it
had anything to do with Ben Thompson, It is true that in
Abilene, and later in Ellsworth, Ben made himself the
spokesman for the Texans, charging that the police stood
in with the harpies and crooks and collected a share of the
money fleeced out of celebrating cowboys. Hickok retali
ated by claiming that men who played cards in the Bull's
Head were apt to be cheated.

This was serious name-calling, and it was freely pre
dicted that it would end in gun smoke. That it did cannot
be attributed solely to the bitter talk being tossed back and
forth. There were other reasons.

Many versions of how and why Phil Coe was killed have
come down to us. They differ widely, and the right or
wrong of it depends on whether it is the pro-Hickok fac
tion speaking or the Texans. But some f acts are available
that neither side can deny.

The fairest of Mattie Silks 's young "boarders" was a
dark-eyed brunette named Jessie Hazel. Both Wild Bill
and Coe coveted her, and it was over her that the two of
them came to blows in the Gulf House, one afternoon. It
couldn't have been much of a fight before friends inter
vened and got them apart. If Phil Coe went unarmed,
he knew how to use his fists. Wild Bill could not have
been any match for him, nor is there any question that he

ABILENE IN ITS TARNISHED GLORY 107

ran second with sultry Jessie Hazel. That became public
knowledge when Coe took her out of Mattie's house and
established her in his cabin as his mistress.

Hickok adherents make much of the fact that Coe
threatened to kill him. The Texans claim that Wild Bill
expressed a similar determination. Anyone who was ac
quainted with the two gladiators must have known it was
just as sure as death and taxes that, in time, the two would
meet head-on.

With the season drawing to a close Ben went to Kansas
City early in September to meet his wife and go on to
Texas for the winter, leaving it to Coe (or Sheran) to
close the Bull's Head. Joplin, Missouri, was as far as
the Thompsons could go by rail. Ben purchased a spirited
team for the long drive south. The team ran away, up
setting the buggy. He came out of the accident with a
broken leg; Mrs. Thompson's right arm was so badly
shattered that it eventually had to be amputated.

They had barely crossed Eed Eiver at Colbert's Ferry
when the news of what had occurred in Abilene on the
evening of October 5 caught up with them: Phil Coe had
been killed by Wild Bill Hickok. " Murdered" was the
word the enraged Texan informers used.

Among the partisan commentators there is solid agree
ment as to what happened up to within a few minutes of
the actual shooting. The Bull's Head was closed and
Phil Coe had arranged to go south with a big party of
Texans who had sold their cattle and were in town for
a last hilarious spree. He joined them and, as was not
his habit, he was armed. They soon got out of h^nd,
trooping noisily from one saloon to another many were
still open for business and as darkness fell, they
"captured" Jake Karatofsky for a lark and herded him
into the Applejack and made him buy drinks for the

108 WILD, WOOIXY A2JTO WICKED

crowd, which affable young Jake was not averse to doing.
After he had bought several rounds they let him go.

Hickok was in the Alamo. Through its three plate-glass
doors he had them in sight most of the time. That he
wanted no trouble is evidenced by the fact that he warned
them several times to cool down. This they failed to do.
The bacchanalian revel continued. The idea spread among
them to make Wild Bill join in the fun. They went to the
Alamo, but he had left for supper. They found Tilm in
a restaurant. Though he refused to take part in their
wild-eyed antics, he invited them to go to the bar in the
Novelty Theatre and have some drinks at his expense.
That they took this as a sign that he didn't mean to
interfere can be taken for granted. They numbered fully
a score, and they had the bit in their teeth by now.

Hickok must have concluded, and wisely too, that he
could not stop them short of resorting to his guns, and
there was no guarantee that that would suffice. With the
close of the season imminent the Town Council had dis
charged his deputies. Those were the odds he faced
twenty against one. If it gave him pause, it is under
standable, and it gives no ground for saying, as some
have, that he was wanting in courage.

It got to be nine o'clock. The roisterers were passing
the Alamo again, when suddenly a shot rang out. With
the sounding of that shot the various accounts of what
followed differ widely, the Hickok apologists seeing it
one way and the Texans another.

This is the most widely held pro-Hickok version :

The doors of the Alamo were open. When the shot
sounded, Hickok leaped out with a Colt in each hand and
demanded to know the reason for the shot. From the
sidewalk Coe answered that he had shot at a dog. His
six-gun was in his hand. He lifted it and fired in Hickok 's
direction. His shot went wild, lodging in the door-frame

ABILENE IN ITS TARNISHED GLOBY 109

at Wild Bill's side. Hickok put a slug into Coe's bowels,
exclaiming, "I shot too low/'

The Texans told it this way:

After the remark about shooting a dog Coe replaced
his pistol in the holster and turned to face Hickok, who
had not drawn a weapon. There was some talk, the
marshal reproving Coe for shooting within the town
limits. The incident was apparently ended. As Coe turned
away, Hickok suddenly whipped out a brace of derringers
from his pockets and fired, then leaped back against the
building as Coe, clutching his stomach with one hand,
and getting his pistol out with the other, snapped a shot
at him that went wild. 3

In one version it is a justified killing; in the other,
murder. ,

Both sides agree on what followed. (Hickok heard a
man turn the corner of A Street and come running up the
sidewalk at his right. He failed to recognize the man,
but saw that he had a pistol in his hand, How the marshal
failed to see that it was his friend Mike Williams, the
special policeman at the Novelty Theatre, rushing to his
assistance, and saw only that he was armed is difficult to
understand. Hickok fired as he whirled and Williams
dropped dead. Wild Bill apparently emptied his six-
gun, for two men in the crowd were wounded before the
bombardment ended. ^

What actually happened in that blazing minute or two
will never be known. The truth is lost in controversy.
But whichever version you accept and there were others
with added trimmings, one writer stating that Hickok
faced not twenty but fifty Texans you search in vain
for the image of the great scout, the coolheaded, steely-
eyed killer with ice water in his veins, and find only a
suddenly panic-stricken Hickok. The illusion of greatness
grows even dimmer when you learn that the following

110 WILD, WOOLLY ASTD WICKED

morning he bought a shotgun, had the barrels sawed off,
and that he kept it at his elbow day and night, loaded
with buckshot, for the rest of his stay in Abilene.

Phil Coe died two days later. His friend End Cotton
took the body to Texas. Coe and Mike Williams were
the only men killed by Hickok in Abilene.

On December 12 the Town Council passed a resolu
tion discharging him "for the reason that the city is no
longer in need of his services." It went into effect on
December 13. There was no word of commendation, no
thanks expressed for services rendered. He had served
eight months less two days.

After leaving Abilene he joined a show troupe present
ing the typical Wild West melodrama of the era and
featuring him as the great scout and frontiersman. (This
was not the Buffalo Bill show.) We have his word for it
that it was the best money he had ever been paid.
Aside from the money, playing the great hero, saving
the stagecoach, and reselling the innocent maiden from
the redskins would seem to have been a role ideally
suited to Hickok, for he had never been averse to having
the spotlight turned on him. That didn't prove to be
the case. After several months he wearied with "killing"
Indians with blank cartridges and the shams of show
business. In Buffalo, New York, the livestock the troupe
was carrying broke out of the enclosure in which the
performance was being given and stampeded through the
streets to the embarrassment of the assorted cowboys
and frontiersmen.

Wild Bill left the show and returned to Kansas City
and gambled for a living. When Wichita captured the
Texas cattle trade, he was there, but not, as has been said,
as a member of the police force. Later, when the market
shifted to tough, booming Caldwell, the Border Queen,
Hickok came as a visitor, making his headquarters at

ABILENE IN ITS TABNISHED tfLORY 111

Puck's Hotel. (This past summer Judge John Eyland
told the writer in the course of a lengthy interview how
he and other boys had followed Wild Bill up and down
Chisholm Street in Caldwell, gawking at the great man.)

It was a few months after his marriage to Agnes Lake,
in Cheyenne, that Hickok and his friend, Colorado
Charley Utter, led a party of prospectors to the Black
Hills. Hickok made a second trip with Utter and settled
in Deadwood, where he was killed by Jack McCall on
August 2, 1876.

As for the cattle market, Abilene had never seen any
thing like it before and never would again. McCoy
states that 237,000 head of Texas cattle were received at
Kansas City alone. 4 This could not have represented more
than 40 per cent of the gross total that changed hands
at Abilene that year. Prices satisfactory to buyer and
seller alike had prevailed throughout most of the season.
And yet, strangely, no optimistic predictions were made
about what 1872 was to bring. Perhaps it was because the
leaders of the cattle trade realized that the miles of
barbed wire blocking their way, and the new Kansas
legislation being contemplated, all favoring the granger,
meant that their domination of the prairies was coining
to an end.

CHAPTER XI

THE LONOHORNS
COME TO ELLSWORTH

8T SOON became apparent that Abilene
was not to lie dormant during the win
ter of 1871-72, as had been the case
in previous years, when its chief occupation had been to
speculate on what the next cattle season would bring. It
could now boast a population of almost twelve hundred
inhabitants. The only way they could support themselves,
T. C. Henry claimed in a series of articles in the Chron
icle, was through agriculture.

Once started on his campaign to make Dickinson County
a prosperous farming community, he never rested. He
not only had the Chronicle advocating his policies but
sponsored an organization known as the Farmers' Pro
tective Association.

He now came out openly against the Texas cattle trade,
asserting that it had held Abilene back for years, that
it was a temporary business at best, and that when it was
over all Abilene would have got out of it was the past
horrors of Texas Street and the deserted stockyards
withering in the sun.

The rift , .between Henry and McCoy widened to the
breaking point. Eearly in February, Henry was responsi-

112

THE IXOTGHORNS COME TO ELLSWORTH 113

ble for the following circular, which was signed by a
number of property owners and sent out broadcast over
Texas :

We the undersigned, members of the Farmers 7
Protective Association, and officers and citizens
of Dickinson County, Kansas, most respectfully
request all who have contemplated driving Texas
cattle to Abilene the coming season to seek some
other point for shipment, as the inhabitants of
Dickinson will no longer submit to the evils of the
trade.

Abilene waited in suspense for the result. The circular
had been sent out over the violent protests of Joe Mc
Coy. He assailed it as the work of a trio of political
schemers (T. C. Henry; his partner, Shane; and their
tool, the editor of the Chronicle) who meant to seize
political control of Dickinson County and who "with
consummate presumption" were undertaking to manip
ulate all public matters. He called them " unscrupulous"
about the means by which they made money. This was a
slap at Henry's winter-wheat program. In sending out
the notification "they had a double purpose to serve,"
he charged. "One of which was to cater to certain farmers
who had suffered small grievances from the presence of
the cattle trade, and thus secure political strength; the
second object was to place themselves in open hostility
to the cattle trade, expecting the following spring to be
bought off." 1

He began an industrious letter-writing campaign and
got Ms friends to join him. Numerous petitions were sent
out begging the Texans to disregard the Henry broadside
and return to Abilene with their herds.

It appears to have been some time before T. C. Henry
and his committee on the one hand, and McCoy and his

WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

friends on the other, realized that their proclamations and
epistles came too late to have any effect on a question
that had already been decided : the Texas cattle trade had
got through with Abilene before Abilene had got through
with it.

The barbed wire in Dickinson County and the granger
troubles were not the only reasons. The Atchison, Topeka
and Santa Fe Railroad had reached the Newton Prairies
and put up a signpost dubbing the miserable collection
of shacks, sheds, and tents Newton, Kansas. It lay athwart
the so-called Chisholm Trail, sixty-five miles south of
Abilene. Sixty-five miles meant a saving of four to five
days for a trail herd, a considerable item/ The Santa Fe
announced that it was going to establish a cattle market
at Newton. It owned the townsite and miles of the sur
rounding open prairie. There was grass in abundance
and, as yet, few farmers. If anything was lacking it was
an abundance of water.

The Santa Fe meant business, and while grass was still
high on what was staked out as Main Street, it brought
McCoy down from Abilene and engaged him to lay out
a stockyard and make the necessary installations.

And there was Ellsworth, an established town of twelve
hundred population on the Kansas Pacific, fifty-nine miles
west of Abilene. For three years Ellsworth had been
trying to capture the Texas cattle trade. It had kept two
men, sometimes as many as six, on the Arkansas River
to intercept the herds coming north and offer them in
ducements for going to Ellsworth. They had captured
thirty-five thousand head in 71. Abel (Shanghai) Pierce,
possibly the most colorful figure among the Texans,
threw his support to Ellsworth and took with him equally
important I. P. (Print) Olive.

Unexpectedly, the town got its biggest boost from the
Kansas Pacific. The railroad company had done little

THE IX)ISrGHORNS COME TO EIXSWOBTH 115

for Abilene, but it had seen the handwriting on the wall
and realized that for the Kansas Pacific it was Ellsworth
or nothing, as far as the cattle trade was concerned. With
the Santa Fe paralleling it across Kansas, sixty to a hun
dred miles to the south, it was obvious that, unless some
thing were done to forestall it, it would eventually control
the shipping of Texas cattle and tons of dried buffalo
hides as well. Accordingly it instructed William M. Cox,
general livestock agent for the company, to engage sev
eral leading Texas stockmen and with a party of en
gineers survey a new and direct trail from some favorable
spot down in Indian Territory to Ellsworth.

Cutting off from the Chisholm Trail at Pond Creek
Eanch, halfway between the Salt Fork of the Arkansas
and Pond Creek, the new route ran up through Kingman
and Ellinwood to Ellsworth, clipping thirty-five miles
off the old trail. This was Cox's Trail and it established
the distance from Bed River to Ellsworth as 350 miles.
The first year it was open, the hoofs of forty-five to fifty
thousand Longhorns churned it to dust. In ? 73 two "hun
dred twenty thousand head followed it to Ellsworth.

Abilene saw no more Longhorns. It was finished. Texas
Street stood deserted. Karatofsky and other merchants
closed their doors and moved to Ellsworth. The Gores
bought the Drovers' Cottage and had part of it taken
down in sections and shipped to booming Ellsworth, where
it served as a leading hotel until it was destroyed by fire.
There was no market for property. Rents fell to a pit
tance. Men who had been in comfortable circumstances
a year before found themselves facing bankruptcy. They
turned against the little group who had brought this
calamity on the town.

T. C. Henry had two hundred acres of fine-looking
winter wheat, promising a bumper yield, to show them.
Though it surpassed his expectations, it did not dispel the

116 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

gloom that had settled on Abilene. He traveled around
eastern Kansas making many speeches. In them there is
no hint of personal discouragement, though he must have
realized that several lean years had to be faced before
the transition from cattle to a prosperous agriculture
could be achieved. He survived them and went on to
riches. He was one of the few. He was reviled and many
of his theories for successful farm management ridiculed
long after they had proved their worth.

Three decades later, with the old scars healed and
forgotten, he wrote: "Abilene became quiet painfully
quiet. Its mortuary fame was nearly as celebrated as its
'live* infamy had been before." 2

Too little credit has been given Shanghai Pierce for
the part he played in making Ellsworth a great cattle
market. The stockyards of '71, located west of town, were
small. He roared with disgust when town officials argued
that they would be adequate to handle the great herds
that would be coming to Ellsworth in the years ahead.
He gave them the names of Print Olive, Major Seth
Mabry, Colonel Myers, William Peryman and half a
dozen other big trail drivers whose word he had that
they would ship from Ellsworth. When Shanghai Pierce
roared, he could be heard. Charley Siringo claimed that
when Shanghai just whispered he could be heard for half
a mile. Of him McCoy said, "Everyone who visits the
western cattle market sees or hears of Shanghai Pierce,
If they are within cannon shot of where he is, they hear
his ear-splitting voice more piercing than a locomotive
whistle more noisy than a steam calliope. It is idle to
try to dispute or debate with him, for he will overwhelm
you with indescribable noise. 5 ' 8

The town fathers could not stand up to hrnr> t Before
he was through, Ellsworth had the biggest shipping in-

THE LONGHORNS COME TO ELLSWORTH 117

stallation in Kansas seven chutes capable of loading
two thousand cattle a day.

The popular notion regarding Shanghai Pierce is that
he came up the trail once or twice a year from Rancho
Grande, on the Gulf, down in Matagorda County, Texas,
with immense herds of his "sea lions," so called because,
like all Longhorns along the Gulf in dry spells, they waded
out and stood half submerged in salt water for hours,
absorbing enough moisture to satisfy their thirst. They
were tremendous steers, as big as any ever seen in
Kansas, many with a record spread of horns.

The great Eancho Grande was a partnership, of which
Pierce was the leading spirit. It is true he drove to
Abilene in '68 and '69, after which he disposed of his
holdings in Texas and devoted himself exclusively to
buying and selling cattle at the Kansas market.

That he was an extreme individualist, arrogant and
domineering, cannot be doubted. If he had a keen sense
of right and wrong, he also possessed a supreme contempt
for the law when it got in his way. The stories told about
him are legion, for he was the most fabulous character
of all the Texans.

In order to understand Ellsworth and what it was when
the cattle trade threatened to turn into a second Abilene,
a bit of history is necessary. An early attempt at settle
ment was made in 1859 on Thompson Creek. In 1860 an
other settlement was made where the military road from
Fort Eiley to Fort Zarah crossed the Smoky Hill River.
"In '62 and '63, renegade pro-slavery men and Indian
raiders, coupled with crop failures, led the settlers to
abandon everything they owned in Ellsworth County and
move to Salina." 4

Shortly thereafter Company H of the 7th Iowa Volun
teer Cavalry was ordered to protect "the more removed

118 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

frontier settlements and the construction area of tlie
Kansas Pacific Railroad from Indian attacks. " 5

Fort Ellsworth, named for Lieutenant Allen Ellsworth,
of the 7th Iowa Volunteer Cavalry, was established on
the north bank of the Smoky Hill. Three years later a
new fort was built and the name changed to Fort Harker,
in honor of Brigadier General Charles Harker of the
9th U.S. Infantry. The new fort was garrisoned by U.S.
regulars and was an important military post until 1873.
Old Fort Ellsworth served as Station Number 6 on the
Butterfield Overland Dispatch operating between the
Missouri River and Denver.

When the Kansas Pacific was completed to Abilene,
rumors got started that, due to financial difficulties, the
railroad would build no farther west than Ellsworth, mak
ing it the terminal for all the Southwest. Adjacent Fort
Harker would thus become the base from which all mili
tary supplies would be freighted to the other Army posts
in western Kansas and Colorado.

How anyone could have been taken in by such irrespon
sible talk is difficult to understand. The railroad was not
in financial straits and had no intention of halting opera
tions at Ellsworth. When it reached there in July 1867, it
built on west to Hays and Wallace with no more time
lost than it required to catch its breath. However, people
poured in by the hundreds , . . "merchants, lawyers,
doctors, gamblers, gunmen, laborers and thieves. Stores,
restaurants, hotels, saloons and gambling houses were
erected of every conceivable material at hand." 6

Early in June 1867 disaster struck. The Smoky Hill
flooded and put four feet of water in the town's main
street. Jerry-built structures collapsed and goods of all
descriptions were swept away. The flood passed, but the
town was ruined. A new and safer site was selected, two
miles to the northwest, New Ellsworth was just taking

THE LrOKGHOR^S COME TO EULSWOKTBE 119

shape when cholera broke out. As the death toll mounted,
panic seized the town and people left in droves, using
any means available, many walking every step of the
way to Salina. When the Kansas Pacific's construction
crew labored into Ellsworth, only fifty hardy souls were
on hand to greet them, all that remained of a population
that but a few weeks before had numbered more than a
thousand. By October they were streaming back.

The town now took on some permanency, Ellsworth
County was organized that fall. An election was held and
E. W. Kingsbury was elected sheriff. Early in 1868,
Ellsworth, the town, was incorporated as a village. It
was not until 1871 that it became a city of the third class.

The Kansas Pacific in running through Ellsworth had
cut the town in two, giving it two Main Streets North
Main and South Main with the tracks lying out in the
open space between them. The business section was lo
cated there and by 1873 there were three blocks of stores,
hotels, and saloons, about equally divided between North
Main and South Main and facing each other across the
tracks. Most of them were frame buildings. A few were sub
stantial structures of stone and brick. The building that
housed Seitz's Drug Store was still standing and in use
as late as 1947.

Profiting by the example of Abilene, Ellsworth hoped
to avoid some of the difficulties that had beset that
boisterous town. It wanted the cattle trade and expected
to profit therefrom, but it did not intend to be inundated
by it. The full assortment of parasites, gamblers, prosti
tutes, and assorted crooks had arrived ahead of the first
herds of '71, many of them the same ones who had run
wild in Abilene. They were back with reinforcements in
'72. Inevitably, the town was growing tough. Saloons
and gambling houses were open night and day.

The much-publicized royal buffalo hunt arranged for

120 WILD, WOOLLY AISTD WICKED

Grand Duke Alexis of Russia had begun at Camp Alexis,
fifty miles west of North Platte, Nebraska, where a num
ber of experienced guides, hunters, and frontiersmen were
gathered. The duke brought with him a retinue of Eussian
officers, secretaries, and flunkies. To do him honor, the
U.S. Government had on hand to accompany him a repre
sentative collection of dignitaries including Generals
Sheridan, the two Forsyths, James and George, Innis N,
Palmer, and G-eorge Armstrong Ouster, with "Colonel"
Buffalo Bill Cody superintending the very plush affair.
After spending a week in the wilds the party reached
Denver and a day later started east over the Kansas
Pacific, steaming across Kansas in a special train of seven
cars. During the night of January 21 the special kicked
up clouds of snow as it roared through Ellsworth.

With tongue in cheek, the sprightly editor of the Re
porter was moved to comment :

Duke Alexis did himself the honor to pass
through Ellsworth the other night sleeping in
seven palace cars. He did not call at the Reporter
office and we don't care. It will be a good excuse
for us not calling on him when we go to Eussia.

As the season of '73 dawned, Ellsworth's only big
year, thirteen saloons were ready for business. In the
hope of controlling them they were put under a heavy
city license of $500, in addition to the Government license
of $25 and a general business tax of $10. As a further safe
guard, prostitution was confined to a district half a mile
from the center of town on the river bottom. It soon won
the local name of Nauchville. It had its own saloons,
gambling joints, and a race track. No attempt was made
to police it. Any cowboy who went down to Nauchville did
so on his own responsibility.

THE DONGHORNS COME TO ELLSWOKTH 121

Ellsworth was prepared for the whirlwind as Abilene
never had been. It had a police force, a jail, a court
house, and a strong town government. In the Ellsworth
Reporter it had an independent newspaper that was not
afraid to speak its mind. It came out boldly for licensing
prostitution. "If it couldn't be rooted out, the vicious
vocation should be made to contribute to the expense of
maintaining law and order."

The City Council enacted the suggestion into law. The
money derived from such licensing and fines amounted
to more than all municipal expenses. It led the Topeka
Commonwealth to comment on July 1, 1873: "The city
[Ellsworth] realizes $300 per month from prostitution
fines alone . . . The city authorities consider that as long
as mankind is depraved and Texas cattle herders exist,
there will be a demand and necessity for prostitutes, and
that as long as prostitutes are bound to dwell in Ellsworth
it is better for the respectable portion of society to hold
prostitutes under restraint of law."

As the season of '73 reached its peak in July, Mayor
Jim (Judge) Miller and the five members of the City
Council had some reason to congratulate themselves on
the way they were handling the teeming town. Including
the tent affairs and the restaurants where men were
housed as well as fed, Ellsworth had twelve "hotels/* and
they were filled to capacity. In the cheaper ones men
slept in shifts. Others, unable to find accommodations,
swarmed up and down the two Main Streets, or stretched
out on the prairie. Though Ellsworth was hog-wild in
many ways, there was very little shooting. An ordinance
prohibited the carrying of firearms, and Marshal Brocky
Jack (John W.) Norton and Policemen John (Long Jack)
DeLong, John Morco, and John S. Brauham the Four
Jacks and Deputy Sheriff Hogue enforced it. Stabbings,

122 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

shooting scrapes, and killings were a common occurrence
down,.in Nauchville. But that didn't count.

To date, the only blemish on the record was the near-
killing of Print Olive. It had taken place late one night
in the Billiard Saloon. Print was playing cards with
Shanghai Pierce, Dave Powers, and two officers from
Fort Harker, when a man named Kennedy walked into
the saloon. Going behind the bar, he snatched up a pistol
and pumped five shots into Print. The two of them had
had an argument that afternoon in a card game, Kennedy
accusing the well-known cattleman of giving him a
crooked deal.

Print was seriously wounded, but he was as tough as
bullhide and managed to survive. Someone, never identi
fied, fired at Kennedy as he ran out and put a slug in his
hip. He was arrested and locked up. During the night,
however, with the help of friends, he crawled through a
window and escaped. He appeared in Dodge City a few
years later, but he was never prosecuted for the Ells
worth affair.

The Thompsons, Ben and his younger brother, Billy,
had come up to Abilene from Austin. Ben was broke
again and hoped to realize something from his interest
in the long-defunct Bull's Head. The stock of liquors had
been removed and sold to settle old debts. The property
itself had become worthless. He got nothing. With what
justice is not known, he accused Hickok of manipulating
things to his own profit and doing JIITD out of several
thousand dollars.

Ellsworth was the next stop. By pawning his jewelry
and borrowing from old Texan friends, such as Cad
Pierce, Neil Cain, George Peshaur, and John Good, all
gamblers and good men with a gun, he scraped together
enough money to open a gambling room in Joe Brennan's
saloon.

THE LONGHOKKTS COME TO ELLSWORTH 123

The Texans, who had been complaining about the
treatment they were getting from Marshal Norton and his
policemen, accusing them of making fake arrests (the
police got $2.00 out of each fine levied), shaking down
drunken cowboys, and practicing every form of petty
graft, now had a spokesman. Ben Thompson was the man
for the job. They rallied around him, and the fat was in
the fire.

Billy Thompson was soon in trouble, which could not
have surprised anyone. He was always in trouble. Ben
had spent his money and time pulling Billy out of one
mess after another. Without Ben he would have been
nobody. This time the offense wasn't serious, except for
its effect on the temper of the Texans. Ed Hogue arrested
him for being drunk, disorderly, and carrying a deadly
weapon. Billy was fined twenty-five dollars and costs.

A week later he was arrested by Policeman " Happy
Jack" Morco, the charge this time being that on June 30
he, "did then and there unlawfully and feloniously carry
on his person a deadly weapon commonly called a revolver
and was unlawfully disturbing the peace and did unlaw
fully assault on John Morco.' 5 Five witnesses were sub
poenaed by the prosecution, among them Sheriff "Cap"
Whitney. Billy pleaded guilty. Judge Vincent B. Osborne
fined him ten dollars and costs amounting to fifteen dollars
a total of twenty-five dollars, and ordered him com
mitted to jail until the fine was paid. It was paid at once
and Billy was released.

Again it was a matter of small consequence unless
Billy had been arrested and fined on a trnmped-up charge
and the Texans would not see it any other way. The
feeling between the police and the Texans (and it wasn't
confined to cowboys) grew ugly. Anyone with half an eye
could see that trouble would come of it. Sheriff Whitney
realized that if there was any man in town who could

124 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

prevent it it was Ben Thompson. The two of them sat
down and talked it over. Ben was friendly with Cap. In
fact, the Texans as a whole respected the sheriff and
had no quarrel with him,

Ben told Whitney that if the town wanted peace it
would have to curb some of the activities of its police.
It was well known that the sheriff had a low opinion of
Brocky Jack Norton and some of his men, but he had
no authority over them. Appealing to the mayor was not
likely to accomplish anything, for Miller had repeatedly
expressed his confidence in the police. So nothing was
done, and the situation grew progressively worse.

Streeter says, "All the officers were brave and ex
perienced men." 7 That is a strange statement, coming
from as careful and unbiased a historian as he. Let's have
a look at them. Brocky Jack Norton had a bad record in
Abilene ; he was strictly a Texas Street character. Happy
Jack Morco was an illiterate moron, who boasted that he
had killed twelve men in California. (That number was
reduced to four when his wife, from whom he had been
separated for some years, arrived in Ellsworth with a
show troupe and told how he had shot down the unarmed
men when they came to her relief when he was drunk
and giving her a beating.) Ed Hogue, a Frenchman, had
an unsavory record. DeLong and Brauham were un
knowns. Ed Crawford, who joined the force after the
big shake-up that was to come, was a cowardly killer and
came to be so regarded by the responsible people of
Ellsworth. Searching their records, one finds very little
to recommend them. That they ran the town to their
personal profit and advantage seems at least a reasona
ble assumption. Certainly their conduct on the afternoon
of August 15, before and after the fatal shooting of
Sheriff "Whitney, revealed them as wholly unworthy of
their trust

CHAPTER XH

DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON

, AUGUST 15, promised to be
Jjust another hot, dry day, with the
LJ usual activity at the stockyards west
of town and clouds of dust swirling up North and South
Main Streets. For miles around the plains were black with
cattle. The usual daily quota of Texans was in town, no
more, no less.

But despite appearances tragedy was stalking close.
Before it was over it was to take its place as one of the
most controversial afternoons in the literary history of
the West. Not so much because of what happened as
because of what, half a century later, was alleged to have
happened. The killing of a sheriff, even one who was
universally respected, was not sufficiently unusual to
keep it fresh in the minds of men for more than a few
years. The facts were known ; they had been digested and
agreed on. After a long delay the slayer had been brought
to justice and a jury had acquitted him. With the passing
decades the principals and minor participants died or
were killed, and Cap Whitney was forgotten. But he was
resuscitated and given iTnTnorf.fl.lity of a sort by an old
man, already in his dotage, who, with his biographer, re
wrote the story of that flaming afternoon in Ellsworth

125

126 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

and made himself its hero. His biographer says that "it
established for all time his pre-eminence among gun-
fighters of the West." 1 He goes on to picture him as
"the finest type of frontiersman, a peace officer unmatched
for gameness, the all-time greatest marshal in the West,
and in general a faultless and invincible superman. "

His name was Wyatt Earp.

On that Angust afternoon in Ellsworth, in 1873, he
was a young, unknown ex-buffalo hunter. He was still
largely unknown in 1931, fifty-eight years later, when
that greatest of all Western thrillers, Wyatt Earp;
Frontier Marshal, appeared in The Saturday Evening
Post and became a best-seller in the bookstores of
America. "Greatest" is appropriately used when its
impact on the reading public and the host of writers
concerned with the Western scene is considered. It was
accepted as history. Wyatt Earp became a legend; he
was quoted, the book paraphrased and cribbed; a score
of novels appeared in which he was the hero.

Several writers questioned Earp's truthfulness. Eobert
M. Wright, in the days of the buffalo hunters and the cow-
town era that followed, Dodge City's leading citizen, in.
his Dodge City: The Cowboy Capital, dismisses him with
three mentions, two of those as one of Bat Master son's
deputies, and finds him so unimportant that he misspells
his name, calling him "Wyat Erb." But they were voices
crying in the wilderness, and years were to pass before
cracks that could not be concealed appeared in the Earp
legend. It is in almost total collapse today, book after
book appearing that pulls it down bit by bit. Only on
television does he continue to wear a halo of gallant
righteousness. In that regard the following quote from a
paper delivered by Nyle H. Miller, secretary of the
Kansas State Historical Society, to the eightieth annual

DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON 127

meeting of the Nebraska State Historical Society is
trenchant :

"Well, you will ask, what are historical societies going
to do about this blatant disregard by TV script writers
for the facts of history? As far as I am concerned per
sonally 'nothing', for I can appreciate the value of
publicity as well as anyone, and the West certainly is reap
ing a harvest . . . But historical societies must continue
to do their best to record history accurately, though I can
attest it's not always the way to be popular. The stories
about these colorful figures [frontier peace officers] when
written by serious historians can be kept within bounds
. . . but when they reach TV, even the wide-open sky isn't
a limit to the elaborations and developing legends . . .
Bear in mind that history is history and what comes over
television quite often isn't/' 2

But to turn from fantasy and get back to reality, there
were three saloons, all on South Main Street, that figured
in what transpired in Ellsworth on the afternoon of
August 15. The reader would do well to place them in Ms
mind. At the corner of South Main and Lincoln Ave.,
and directly across from the Grand Central Hotel, was
Joe Brennan's place, Ben Thompson's headquarters.
Halfway down the block was Nick Lentz's saloon, and
farther west, at the corner of Douglas Ave. and South
Main, the saloon of Jake New.

Brennan's place was popular and it was thronged with
Texans as usual. A number of games were in progress,
but for^sinall stakes. Across the room Neil Cain was deal
ing monte. Cad Pierce was doing the betting. The play
was getting high. The poker players cashed in their chips
and came over to watch.

Ben Thompson was among the interested onlookers.
Billy Thompson was at the bar. According to all the ac
cumulated evidence, he had been drinking heavily since

128 WELD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

noon. Cad had considerable money on him and wanted to
bet higher stakes than Cain was willing to take. "Witnesses
later testified that Cad Pierce said to Ben, "Get me some
body to take my over-bets on Neil's game."

John Sterling, a professional gambler from the Lone
Star State, but disliked by most Texans, was at the bar.
He was a big bettor, and the fact that he usually won may
have accounted for his unpopularity. Ben went over to
him and explained the situation. Sterling had been drink
ing some and was in a free and easy mood. Loudly enough
for others to hear, he said, "Sure, I'll take Cad on for all
Neil doesn't want. And Ben, if I win, consider yourself in
for one-half."

He sat down beside Cad and covered the latter 's bets.
The game ran along for an hour, Sterling winning oftener
than he lost. He continued to drink. He had a dirty tongue,
and as the liquor took hold of him, he became abusive.
When he had won better than a thousand dollars, he
stuffed the money in his pocket and walked out.

Brennan spoke up. "Ben that tinhorn made you a deal.
You going to let him walk out on you?"

"I guess Sterling's good for it," Thompson answered.
"I'll look him up this afternoon."

It was after three o 'clock when he found Sterling down
the block in Nick Lentz's saloon, standing at the bar
with Happy Jack Morco, the policeman. Sterling grew
violently angry when Ben asked him for a settlement.
Half-drunk though he was, he knew the other was un
armed. Letting his temper run away with him, he slapped
Ben in the face. He must have realized almost instantly
that he had made a mistake ; that the man who slapped
Ben Thompson's face was asking for a sudden demise.
It explains better than anything else Sterling's subse
quent conduct.

Ben rushed at Sterling, only to have Happy Jack step

DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON 129

in between them and back Mm off at gnn point. They ex
changed some bitter words. Ben hated Morco and Morco
hated him. Thompson says that "the argument ended
when I told Morco what I thought of him and advised him
to get that God damned drunk out of my way. ' '

Sterling and Morco went out together and walked up
the street to Jake New's place at the corner. Ben went back
to Brennan's, where Billy, Cad Pierce, and a coterie of
friends were gathered. Ben motioned to Cad and they
walked to the back of the saloon and were discussing the
incident when Sterling and Happy Jack came to the
saloon door and the latter shouted, "Get your guns you
damn Texas sons a bitches and fight. ' 9 Sterling was armed
with a shotgun and Morco with a brace of pistols. When
they left the saloon door they went back toward New's
corner.

The effect of this challenge on the Lone Star men can
be imagined. Ben tried to borrow a six-shooter but
couldn't find one. That he and his friends were unarmed
is excellent proof that they were obeying the ordinance
prohibiting the carrying of firearms. Ben ran up in back
of the buildings to Jake New's, where he had checked his
guns. In the back room of the saloon he seized his pistols
and a sixteen-shot Winchester rifle and ran out in front,
intending, he says, to get out on the railroad, where by
standers would not get hit, and fight it out.

His brother Billy was just a step or two behind him,
and when Billy rushed out he had Ben's double-barreled
shotgun in his hands. It was a fine gun, worth about
$150, and had been given to Ben by Cad Pierce. (The shot
gun now reposes in the Beeson Museum in Dodge City.
Mrs. Merritt Beeson tells me that her father-in-law,
Chalk Beeson, advanced Thompson $75 on it and that
Ben never reclaimed it. When the gnn came into Merritt

130 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

Beeson's possession he had the barrels cut back about
four inches.)

To continue Ben's story, he says Billy had both barrels
cocked and was handling the gun carelessly. In his
drunken clumsiness one barrel was discharged accidently,
the slugs plowing into the plank sidewalk at the feet of
Major Seth Mabry and Captain Eugene Millett, both well-
known cattlemen, who were standing in front of New's
saloon* That the gun was discharged accidently is not
disputed by any authentic commentator. Neither man
was injured by the blast. That they entertained no ill-will
for the Thompsons over the incident bcame a matter of
record later in the afternoon.

Ben took the shotgun away from his brother and was
extracting the remaining shell when either Mabry or
Millett cried: "Look out, Ben, those fellows are after
you!"

Ben handed the shotgun back to Billy and the two of
them ran out on the railroad tracks.

A small crowd had gathered at the door of Nick Lentz's
place, halfway up the block, knowing trouble was afoot
and anxious to learn what it was about.

When the two Thompsons reached the west end of the
combination passenger and freight depot, Ben shouted:
"All right you Texas-murdering sons of bitches get your
guns; if you want to fight here we are!"

Sterling and Morco had run into Lentz's saloon. City
Marshal Brocky Jack Norton had joined them. The
marshal, Policeman Morco, and Sterling showed no im
mediate inclination to accept the challenge and come out.
All three were still in the saloon when Cap Whitney
rounded the Douglas Avenue corner of Seitz's Drug
Store. Seeing the crowd gathered in front of Lentz's
saloon, he cut diagonally across the tracks to quell the
disturbance, whatever it was. He was in his shirt sleeves

DEATH I]ST THE AETERNOOST 131

and unarmed. He had just come from home, and if he
was unarmed it must be remembered he was not charged
with keeping the peace of the town.

Seeing the sheriff in the crowd, Marshal Norton
stepped out and told Whitney that he was going over to
the tracks and arrest the Thompsons. There is good evi
dence that Cap stopped him, saying, " They '11 shoot you.
I'll go ; they won't harm me/'

The Thompsons saw him coming and held their fire.

Cap listened to their story. "Boys, this is a mistake.
Let's not have any trouble."

Ben told him Billy and he were not looking for trouble
but would defend themselves if Happy Jack Morco and
the others wanted to fight.

Whitney promised he would protect them and see that
they got their rights if they would put up their guns. Ben
says he was satisfied that Cap would do as he said. He
suggested that the three of them go over to Joe Brennan's
saloon, have a drink, and that he would see that Billy put
the shotgun away*

The crowd parted as they approached the saloon. Billy
went in first, Whitney was behind him, and Ben, bring
ing up the rear, was just stepping through the door when
Bill Langford, a Texan, cried: "Ben, here comes Morco!"

Ben whirled and saw Happy Jack running toward
Brennan's place, a pistol in his hand. There was an alley
between Brennan's saloon and Jerome Beebe's general
store next door. Ben darted into the mouth of the alley
and stood there peering around the corner of Beebe's
store, his rifle raised.

Whitney had heard Langford's warning cry and rushed
out of the saloon a step or two behind Ben. Seeing Ben
waiting with his Winchester raised and Happy Jack's
lifted pistol and manner leaving no doubt of his in-

132 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

tentions, he yelled, "Stop! What's the meaning of all
this?"

His protest had no effect on Morco. When Happy
Jack came abreast of Beebe's, he saw Ben waiting for
him. It stopped him in his tracks, and though he was the
aggressor, looking for trouble, the coward in him came
to the surface and he bellered, "What the hell are you
doing?" He didn't wait for an answer. Beebe's door was
open and he leaped for it. Ben fired and missed, the
bullet burying itself in the door casing within a few inches
of Morco 's head. It was, as Cunningham says, "perhaps
the poorest shooting with which Ben Thompson has ever
been charged." 8

Had he killed Morco, the troubled afternoon would
have been over. He undoubtedly would have gone free,
and Cap Whitney's life would have been spared.

A moment after Ben's shot Billy stumbled out of
Brennan's. He still carried the shotgun. As he got it in
position to fire, Whitney, who was standing only a dozen
feet away, turned in his direction and cried: "Don't
shoot, Billy; it's Whitney!"

The gun went off, and the sheriff received the whole
blast, buckshot tearing into his arm, right shoulder, and
piercing the left lung. He staggered and went down. For
a moment it was thought he was dead. "My God, Billy,
look what you've done!" Ben raged. "You shot our best
friend!"

It was said by some that Billy's answer was : "I don't
give a damn; I would have shot if he was Jesus Christ."

It is doubtful if he said it. It sounds like one of the
myriad fantastic tales that someone has heard from
Gran 'pa, who had got it from some alleged eyewitness,
and, as historians and researchers know only too well,
Gran 'pa in his old age was often a confirmed liar.

The Ellsworth Reporter claimed the shooting was not

DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON 133

an accident ; that WMtney had made two attempts to get
out of the line of fire, which would have been difficult,
with the weaving gun in the unsteady hands of a drunken
man. There were many in Ellsworth who agreed with the
newspaper. The Texans were unanimous in calling it an
accident. Without attempting to build up any brief for
Billy Thompson, it must be remembered that half an hour
earlier he was drunk enough to have come within inches
of killing Seth Mabry and Eugene Millett in what was
surely an accident. The two incidents bear a marked
similarity. It is also well to remember that when Billy
Thompson was extradited from Texas in 1877, after a
long legal battle, and returned to Kansas to stand trial
for the slaying of Chauncey Whitney, the verdict of the
jury was not guilty; that death had occurred as a result
of a shot fired by accident.

But a lot of water was to go over the dam before that
day was reached.

CHAPTER

A DAY TO REMEMBER

PICKED Whitney up at
ronce and carried him to his home.
LJ Heroic efforts were made to save his
life. In addition to the local doctors, the post surgeon at
Fort Biley was sent for. Blood poisoning set in, and after
lingering for three days he died on August 18.

When the dying sheriff was carried away, the after
noon was far from over. As to what followed, there are
conflicting stories. T. T ie usually reliable Colonel Buck
Walton, Ben Thompson's original biographer and
apologist, mixes up isome of the facts. So do others. In the
hour following the shooting every move the Thompsons
made can be documented. When put together they make
the Earp-Lake account utterly ridiculous. Those writers
who have taken the book for their text are of necessity
mired in a sea of errors.

A few minutes after Whitney was carried away, Ben
crossed the street to Larkin's Grand Central Hotel,
where he lived. He went inside, very likely to his room. He
soon reappeared on the sidewalk the finest in all Kansas,
it was said, made of slabs of finished limestone with the
shotgun, which he prized, cradled in his arm and pockets
sagging with shells for the gun. Billy remained in Bren-

A BAY TO REMEMBEE 135

nan's. It was the rallying point for the Texans, though
Walton says a number "were forted up in the hotel." 4
With Billy were Cad Pierce, Neil Cain, John Good, Bill
Longford, George Peshaur, and others. Reinforcements
arrived via the back entrance. The general feeling that a
gun battle was imminent had cleared both North Main and
South Main Streets.

Some say Billy Thompson went down the alley to
New's saloon and helped himself to a horse. John
Montgomery, then editor of the Reporter, in an interview
with Streeter, said the horse belonged to Billy and that it
was in Sam John's livery stable in back of the Grand
Central, 1

By arrangement Neil Cain brought the horse to the
front of Brennan 's saloon and held it while Billy mounted.
Cad collected money from half a dozen men and handed
Billy the roll "Take this, Billy/' he said. "We figure
you'll need it."

Billy then rode directly across the tracks to where Ben
stood in front of the hotel. In his sworn testimony at
Billy's trial Ben said: "He [Billy] was in no condition
to understand the seriousness of what he had done. I
nrged him to get out of town at once. 'For God's sake
leave town or you will be murdered in cold blood/ I told
him. I told him to go out to one of the cow camps and
lay low for a few days until the excitement blew over . . .
I did not think Whitney was badly hurt ; that as soon as I
could see Whitney, I was satisfied it would be all right/'

Billy rode out of town, "cursing and inviting a fight." 2
He went no further than Nauchville, where he spent some
time with his current light of love, one Molly Brennan.
(Though it has appeared in print that she was Joe
Brennan 's divorced wife no evidence to support the story
has been uncovered.)

A posse of armed citizens rode out of town to capture

136 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

Billy and bring him back. They didn't find him, and it
was said they didn't look too hard.

Some of Ben's further testimony verges on the in-
credible. He says he was in a theater watching a play on
the evening of the shooting when a friend told him Billy
had returned to town and was waiting for him at the
side of the hotel; that he met him and found him still
dazed and sick from the whiskey he had drank. He had
lost his money and one of his pistols. Ben gave him some
money and admitted that he heard from him for three
or four days following but . , . " never saw him again
until I met him in Texas."

When Billy Thompson rode out of Ellswortli on the
afternoon of the fifteenth, he left an explosive situation
behind him. Ben continued to pace back and forth in front
of the Grand Central. Across the way, Cad Pierce and a
score of Texans moved out in front of Brennan's saloon.
All had secured their arms. Deputy Sheriff Hogue was
not in evidence. According to all reliable accounts, City
Marshal Brocky Jack Norton and John Sterling were in
Nick Lentz's saloon, and were joined there by Happy Jack
Morco. Former policeman Long Jack DeLong had been
removed from the force three days prior to the shooting
of Cap Whitney. That leaves only Policeman John
Brauham unaccounted for. Cunningham explains Hogue 's
absence by saying that early in the fight, when the two
Thompsons were out on the railroad tracks, that the
deputy sheriff shoved a rifle out of a second-floor window
in a building on North Main Street and that before he
could fire Ben snapped a fast shot at him. "But Hogue
jerked his head in quickly. Thompson then tried to shoot
through the plank wall that sheltered Hogue. The bullet
missed but it waked in Hogue a burning desire to emi
grate. He left town and ran across the river, to stay there
until the war was over." 8

A DAY TO REMEMBER 137

This is in complete contradiction of the record and
can not be sustained. Ben Thompson fired only one shot
all afternoon, the one directed at Happy Jack Morco;
he did not indulge in any target practice with Ed Hogue.
Other than the Grand Central Hotel there was only one
two-story building on North Main Street. That was
Arthur Larkin's Dry Goods Store, next to the Grand
Central. The town had rented a second-floor room from
Larkin, facing the street, and used it as the police court
and council chamber. Hogue, in his dual capacity of
deputy and town policeman, may have sought refuge
there. Very likely Brauham was there too. Mayor Miller
had been sent for. When he rushed downtown from his
home, a few minutes after Billy Thompson's departure,
Hogue and Brauham were waiting for him. Ed Crawford,
who had been on the force temporarily, was also present.

Before going upstairs Miller had walked up to Ben
and asked him to give up his arms, which Ben had bluntly
refused to do.

Miller was furious. He demanded the immediate ar
rest of Thompson and the other armed Texans. He sent
Ed Crawford to round up Marshal Norton and Police
man Morco. There was some delay, and Miller's temper
did not improve. He ordered the marshal to arrest Ben
and his cohorts. Brocky Jack demurred; he said it
couldn't be done; that the Texans were too strong.

The mayor blew up and discharged the whole force.
He fired Hogue as a policeman, but he couldn't remove
him as deputy sheriff. This highhanded action left Hogue
as the only officer with authority to make arrests.

Accompanied by Hogue, the mayor accosted Thompson
again, told him what he had done, and asked him to hand
over his weapons and bring hostilities to an end.

Ben was ready to bargain. He said he would surrender
if Miller would disarm Happy Jack and Sterling and

138 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

keep them disarmed. The mayor agreed to his terms.
Morco and Sterling were relieved of their arms. Deputy
Sheriff Hogue then received Ben's arms. The tension
eased at once.

After Ben surrendered, Miller called the City Council
in special session and asked that his action in discharging
the police force be approved. After some heated argu
ment he was finally sustained by a vote of three to two.
He endeavored to have former policeman John DeLong
appointed city marshal. When DeLong was rejected,
Judge Miller named Ed Hogue. That was approved and
Hogue was sworn in.

The mayor then appointed Ed Crawford, DeLong, and
John Morco to the force and they were confirmed by the
Council. It has been referred to by certain writers as
"a complete house cleaning. " It was less than that. Only
Brocky Jack Norton and John Brauham were gone. Happy
Jack Morco, who should have been the first to go, was
retained. Both DeLong and Crawford had served pre
viously. One can only wonder if Mayor Jim Miller was so
obtuse as not to realize that in keeping Happy Jack on
the force he was inviting further trouble. Above all
others, Morco was detested by the Texans. That the
Thompson faction would ever let up on him was not to
be expected now. To show them that he didn't intend to
walk wide of them, Morco lodged against Ben Thompson
a charge of felonious assault with a deadly weapon.

Ben appeared before Judge Osborne to answer the
charge. He was accompanied by Seth Mabry and Captain
Millett. He was ordered held. Mabry and MUlett arranged
bail for him and he was released. Morco had a change of
heart overnight and in the morning declined to appear
against him. The case was dismissed.

There was no further trouble, but beneath the surface
the town continued to seethe. A number of citizens formed

A DAY TO EEMEMBER 139

a vigilance committee for ridding Ellsworth of unde
sirable Texans. The committee adopted a system of warn
ings to leave town. They were called " white affidavits/'
When you were handed one, yon knew your number was
up and that you had twenty-four hours to get out of Ells
worth.

Ben Thompson didn't wait; he knew his name would
head the list. He prepared to leave for Kansas City at
once. He learned in some way that ' ' white affidavits " had
been issued for Cad Pierce, Neil Cain, and John Good.
He advised them to leave with him. They refused, and
he went alone. The next afternoon, August 20, they de
cided to investigate. They encountered City Marshal
Hogue in front of Beebe's store. He denied that affi
davits had been issued for them. Not satisfied, they re
quested him to go with them and question Happy Jack
Morco. This Hogue refused to do, declaring that there had
been too much talk already.

Policeman Ed Crawford got into the argument, saying:
" Yes, a damn sight too much talk on your side ... If you
want a fight here is a good place for it as good as any!"

Witnesses said that Crawford stepped back and put
his hand on his six-shooter ; that when Cad put his hand
behind his back (he was not armed) Crawford drew and
fired, the bullet striking Pierce in the side. He ran into
the store, with Crawford following him and shooting
again, the second shot catching Pierce in the right arm.
The wounded man collapsed when Crawford beat him
over the head with his six-gun.

Pierce lived only a few minutes. The feeling in Ells
worth was all against Crawford. On all sides the killing
of Cad Pierce was described as a cold-blooded murder.

According to the Ellsworth Reporter, Neil Cain was
"treed" by Happy Jack the following day. The latter had
both pistols trained on the Texan and was about to kill

140 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

him, when City Marshal Hogue intervened. Cain got a
horse and fled from town.

The Texans were now aroused as they never had been.
A score of armed men rode into town. Their shooting,
which injured no one, cleared the streets. Before they
left, they let it be known that it was their intention to re
turn and burn Ellsworth.

The town took it as a very real threat. The paper used
its biggest type to proclaim that law and order must pre
vail. Meetings were held at which there was a great out
pouring of citizens. "Besolutions were passed calling for
the suppression of gambling. Men armed themselves and
offered their services to the mayor. Bands of armed
citizens patrolled the streets at night to guard against a
conflagration. " 4 The Texans retorted by wiring Ben
Thompson in Kansas City to buy a number of guns and a
great quantity of ammunition and bring them to Ells
worth at once.

This cops-and-robbers business came to nothing. The
Kansas Pacific agent divulged the contents of the tele
gram. Trains reaching Salina from the east were searched
for the next few days, but Ben was not on any of them.
He had gone to St. Louis and was on Ms way by steam
boat to New Orleans.

Governor Osborne telegraphed Mayor Miller to pre
serve law and order and to call on the state government
for aid if necessary. He sent Attorney General Williams
to Ellsworth for a firsthand report on the situation. The
activity of the citizens convinced the rough element that
it was time to leave. The Topeka Commonwealth, always
abreast of the news, commented: "The 21st. of August
will be remembered in Ellsworth for the exodus of the
roughs and gamblers. "

Public dissatisfaction with the police force rose to such
a pitch that the mayor and Councilman Seitz and Stebbins,

A DAY TO KEMEMBER

the stubborn supporters of Happy Jack and Crawford,
realized that they (Morco and Crawford) had to go. On
August 27, twelve days after the killing of Sheriff
Whitney, the police force was discharged for the second
time. By unanimous vote Dick Freebourn was appointed
city marshal, with authority to chose his own assistants.
He selected J. C. (Charlie) Brown and John DeLong.
Freebourn was a great improvement on Brocky Jack
Norton and Ed Hogue. But in Charlie Brown, who
succeeded him that fall, Ellsworth found the peace officer
it needed. He was cut on the pattern of Tom Smith, the
hero of Abilene strict, fair, and incorruptible. He served
for two years a record unequaled by any other cow-town
officer and when he offered his resignation, the Council
accepted it with regret and words of praise for the serv
ices he had rendered.

On September 4, less than three weeks after the death
of Cap Whitney, Happy Jack Morco was killed by Police
man Brown. He had left Ellsworth for Salina inn mediately
after being discharged from the police. The charge was
made against him that he had carried off a pair of ex
pensive pistols belonging to John Good, valued at a hun
dred dollars. Salina authorities were asked to hold him.
Brown went over to get Mm. Brown recovered the pistols,
but Salina officers refused to let him have Morco, the
latter having convinced them that if he were taken back
to Ellsworth he would be foully murdered by the Texas
element. It must have raised a question in Brown's mind,
for although he knew of no plot to murder Morco he ad
vised him to give Ellsworth a wide berth.

The challenge was too much for Morco to resist. He
rode to Ellsworth on a freight train that night and in the
morning he paraded up and down South Main Street,
armed with a revolver but making no trouble. Brown ac
costed him and ordered him to give up the weapon.

142 WILD, WOOLLY AOT) WICKED

Morco's answer was to draw the gun. Brown fired, his
first shot passing through Happy Jack's heart, and as
he was falling a second bullet entered his head.

Ellsworth said it was good-riddance.

Ed Crawford was the next to be killed. He had left
town with a warning not to return. But he was back, early
in November. On the night of the fourth day of his re
turn, he went down to Nauchville, In Lizzie Palmer's
house he found a number of Texans. An argument en
sued. Crawford stepped out into the hall. A burst of gun
fire followed, one bullet passing through Crawford's head
and another striking him in the stomach. It was never
learned who fired the fatal shots but it was widely be
lieved that one of the Putnams, brothers-in-law of Cad
Pierce, killed Crawford to avenge the murder of Cad.

Ed Hogue had gone to Dodge City. He left there in
'74, joining in the gold rush to the Black Hills, where, it
was said, he came to a violent end in the fall of '76.

Before the month was gone, trouble of quite a different
sort descended on Ellsworth. On September 20, the New
York Stock Exchange closed its doors. Panic swept
the country, banks failed, and railroads went into re
ceivership. The livestock market collapsed and the price
of beef dropped to the vanishing point as "cattlemen,
unable to borrow money, threw more and more cattle on
the open market, demoralizing the industry and (further)
depressing the prices. Forty per cent of the cattle were
put in winter quarters on the grazing land in and around
Ellsworth: Thousands were killed for their tallow. Ells
worth saw its doom as a cattle center."

The gloomy predictions were justified. The panic would
pass and prices would rise again, but there was another
cloud on the horizon. A hundred miles to the south
Wichita had opened a new cattle market. It would draw

A DAY TO EEMEMBEB 143

most of the trade away from Newton and all of it from
Ellsworth.

The Longhorns that had been put out on the prairie
to winter perished by the thousands. Ellsworth got what
was left. No new herds came. "Only 18,500 head were
shipped out in 1874. By 1875 Ellsworth ceased to be an
important cattle center. Wichita took the trade, the
toughs and some of the merchants/' 6

CHAPTER XIV

FACT VERSUS FICTION

BF THE long factual recital of what oc
curred in Ellsworth, Kansas, on the
afternoon of Friday, August 15, given
in the preceding chapters, shows those few hours to have
been highly dramatic, history becomes pallid and only
modestly exciting when compared with the super-melo
dramatic version put together by Wyatt Earp and his
biographer, which has "a hundred forty-five slugs
screaming across the plaza. "

It gets off to a bad start, however, by making the date
August 18. That glaring error is compounded by many
others. To enumerate them would be a thankless task.
Several of the errors that early critics of the narrative
pointed out, and that first cast doubt on it, can be men
tioned.

According to Earp, Ben Thompson and the Texans
were gathered in front of the Grand Central Hotel during
his conversation with Mayor Miller and across the street
from where he and Miller stood. This is a complete
reversal of their positions; Ben was alone in front of
the hotel ; the mayor was on North Main Street with him ;
the Texans were across the way on South Main Street,
in front of Brennan's saloon. Again, Earp says that a

144

FACT VEESUS FICTION 145

messenger ran up while he was talking to Miller with
word that Whitney was dead. "The announcement was
premature," we are told. "Whitney actually lived for
several hours after the Thompson hearing." x

Cap didn't breathe his last until Monday, three days
later. Earp designates Cad Pierce, Neil Cain, and John
Good as cowboys. They were gamblers. He repeatedly
speaks of the space between North Main Street and South
Main Street, as the "plaza" a term never used by the
citizens of Ellsworth. He names Charlie Brown and Ed
Crawford as being on the police force, which neither was
at the time.

But the list is too long. What is of interest is Wyatt 's
account of how he, unknown, a stranger who just happened
to be in Ellsworth, without any previous experience as
a lawman, save for the few months he had served as mar
shal of the little farm community of Lamar, in Barton
County, Missouri, stepped into the breach when Mayor
Jim Miller appeared on the scene. One must remember
that the name Wyatt Earp meant exactly nothing. He had
hunted buffalo on the Salt Fork of the Arkansas and
Medicine Lodge Creek and wintered at the trading post
of Captain C. H. Stone, in 1871-73. Stone's store was
the beginning of what was to become the town of Cald-
well, Kansas. He claims to have been well acquainted
with Ben Thompson. At most, it could have been only
a hearsay acquaintance. As for Ben, he doesn't mention
him in the story of his life given to Buck Walton. Chances
are that he had never heard of Earp in his Ellsworth
days.

Before reaching the climactic moment when the re
doubtable Wyatt alleges he stepped up to the mayor and
offered to cross the "plaza" and arrest Thompson, he
says: "At his back [Thompson's] were a hundred Texas
men, half of them man-killers of record, the rest more

146 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

than willing to "be ... In groups around the plaza, three
or four hundred more Texans were distributed. Every
man-jack had six-guns at his hips and a gunhand itching
for play." 2

After picturing the police as cowed and helpless, Earp,
undeterred by the overwhelming odds, alleges that the
following dialogue ensued between him and Mayor
Miller.

Earp: "Nice police force youVe got here."

Miller: "Who are you?"

Earp: "Just a looker-on."

Miller: "Well, don't talk so much. You haven't even
got a gun."

Earp says he was in shirt sleeves and obviously un
armed.

Earp : "It's none of my business, but if it was, I'd get
me a gun and arrest Ben Thompson or kill him."

Brocky Jack Norton and Happy Jack Morco were
standing by.

Morco : "Don't pay any attention to that kid, Jim."

Miller: "You're fired, Norton. You, too, Morco."
(The mayor snatches the marshal's badge from Brocky
Jack's shirt front.) "As soon as I can find Brown and
Crawford, I'll fire them."

The mayor turns to Earp.

Miller: "I'll make this your business. You're marshal
of Ellsworth. Here's your badge. Go into Beebe's and get
some guns. I order you to arrest Ben Thompson." 3

The foregoing is first-rate folklore fiction but that
is all it is. It never happened.

It was Wyatt Earp's short journey across the "plaza"
under the muzzle of Ben Thompson's shotgun (to say
nothing of the surrounding hundreds of armed Texans)
that, according to his admiring biographer, "established

FACT VERSUS FICTION 147

for all time Ms preeminence among gun-fighters of the
West."

How Ben Thompson, a fearless bulldog of a man, of
whom Emerson Hough once said: "With the six-shooter
he was a peerless shot, an absolute genius ; none in all his
wide surrounding claiming to be his superior," waited
like a sitting duck, though armed with a brace of pistols
as well as a shotgun, suffered the unknown Earp to close
in on him and demand that he toss his shotgun into the
street, goes beyond the bounds of plausibility.

But it makes good reading. Perhaps that was the end
result Wyatt had in mind.

With measured, unfaltering step, his arms hanging
loosely at his sides, "conveniently close to his holsters,"
the youthful marshal moves in until only a few yards
separate the antagonists. The whole town is watching.
The guns of the massed Texans, the "man-killers of
record," are silent. Ben Thompson, "the deadliest gun
man then alive," suddenly stops his angry pacing and
defiant threats. A spell seems to have been cast on hvm T
Like a frightened tenderfoot, he cries: "What are yon
going to do with me?"

"Kill you or take you to jail."

Amazedly, we read the following: "Neither Ben
Thompson nor any onlooker, and least of all Wyatt Earp,
has offered a completely satisfactory explanation [!] for
what followed."

It would have been difficult, not to say impossible.

Ben grinned, meekly tossed the shotgun into the road,
and raised his hands. "You win."

Earp says he marched Ben across the "plaza" to
Judge Osborne's court, where "five hundred milling men
stormed at the narrow doorway." Judge Osborne fined
the prisoner twenty-five dollars [as Earp tells it] and the
Mayor then offered him $125 a month to continue as City

148 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

Marshal. "Ellsworth/' Wyatt says he answered, "figures
sheriffs at twenty-five dollars a head, I don't figure the
town's my size."

Earp had been living in Hollywood for some years. It
evidently had had some effect on him, for the tag line he
says he gave Jim Miller sounds like a title plucked out of
one of the old silent Westerns.

To give the book an air of authenticity, there are num
erous quotes from the Ellsworth Reporter. There is only
one that is important. It is the Reporter's account of the
killing of Sheriff Whitney and the events that followed.
To historians it is a familiar document. In its entirety
Wyatt Earp's name is not mentioned. In Wyatt Earp:
Frontier Marshal the last lines are omitted. Here they
are:

Thus the city was left without a police force,
with no one but Deputy Sheriff Hogue to make
arrests. He received the arms of Ben Thompson
on the agreement of Happy Jack Morco to give
up his arms.

The reason for omitting these lines is too obvious to
call for explanation. Include them and the Earp story is
demolished. That it fails to include them cannot be at
tributed to a faulty memory. Was the deletion made be
cause a hoax was being perpetrated that could not
survive, including the Reporter's statement that Deputy
Sheriff Hogue received the arms of Ben Thompson? The
reader may decide that for himself.

Cunningham says: "I find the account of Wyatt Earp
backing down a shotgun-armed Thompson . , . par
ticularly a Thompson backed by wild-eyed Texas cow
boys, highly unconvincing to use no stronger term. All
my life I have heard the story of the killing of Sheriff
Whitney and the subsequent rioting. Granted that my*

PACT VERSUS FICTION 149

informants were Texas men ... it must be remarked
that there were many of them men who did not drink,
did not gamble, had no good word to say of the brothers
Thompson/' 4

Streeter says: "A study of the evidence has convinced
the writer that Wyatt Earp did not arrest Ben Thomp
son and that the account in the local paper (the Ells
worth Reporter) is correct."

William McLeod Raine, the first writer elected to the
Cowboy Hall of Fame, at Oklahoma City, the first
honorary president of the Western Writers of America,
Inc., and a man highly esteemed by all who were fortu
nate to know him, comments in what is believed to be the
last article he wrote :

"It was in Ellsworth, according to Mr. Lake, that
Wyatt performed the feat which 'established for all time
his preeminence among gun-fighters of the West. This
particular bit of heroism has been ignored in written
tales but was a word of mouth sensation in '73, from the
Platte to the Eio Grande/ Mr. Lake is right in one re
spect. This tragic day in the history of Ellsworth received
a great deal of attention. Every newspaper in Kansas
and Nebraska carried stories covering it. The Ellsworth
Reporter gave it pages . . . But nobody at any time during
the next fifty years thought of Wyatt Earp in connection
with the affair. No newspaper, no writer made any refer
ence to him in any way. There is a reason for this. He
wasn't there." 5

Raine continues. ' * I have a letter before me written by
Mr. Streeter [Floyd B. Streeter, librarian at Kansas
State College and historian of note]. 'You are correct
about Wyatt Earp not being within 100 miles of Ells
worth at the time Sheriff Whitney was killed by Billy
Thompson. After Stuart Lake's book appeared I made
~a thorough study of this subject and got every scrap of

150 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

information from old court records that no writer had
ever used, pioneer newspapers, living eyewitnesses and
other sources and wrote what I believe is the accurate
story.' " 6

Baine calls Streeter "an exceedingly accurate re
porter,' 5 to which the writer of this narrative can heartily
attest. Following the trail he blazed, and having open to
him many, but not all, of the sources of information he
found to hand eyewitnesses having long since gone to
their reward the few trifling errors discovered in
Streeter 's writings do not lessen his great contribution
to Kansas cow-town history.

There are various tales covering Billy Thompson's
whereabouts following his flight from Ellsworth. The
State of Kansas had posted a reward of five hundred dol
lars for his arrest. Evidently realizing that there were
any number of men in the trail towns who would be glad
to turn him in for the reward, he headed for Texas. Five
hundred dollars looked just as big in Texas as it did in
Kansas. It kept him on the dodge for a year. Thinking the
matter had been forgotten, he began to show himself in
his old haunts.

Whether Billy knew it or not, he was very much a
fugitive from justice. In December 1874, on information
filed and entered in the District Court of Ellsworth
County, Kansas, he was indicted for murder. A warrant
was issued, and in the spring of 75 Texas authorities
were notified to that effect. It was not until the fall of '76,
however, that he was taken into custody, and then only
by accident.

For some time he had been living with Neil Cain and
the latter 9 s father, a few miles northeast of Austin. Cain
had got mixed up with the rustling of a small bunch of
Longhorns. The cattle were traced to the Cain place by
Captain J. C. Sparks of Company C, Frontier Battalion

FACT VERSUS FICTION 151

of the Texas Kangers and nine of Ms company. Neil Cain
escaped. Eb Stewart, one of his companions, was wounded
and captured. Billy was an innocent spectator and made
no attempt to flee. Sparks recognized him and took him
with Stewart and jailed him on an indictment already ten
years old for complicity in the killing of a soldier in an
Austin bordello. Sparks was just stalling for time. He
remembered the reward offered by the State of Kansas on
Billy. He wired the sheriff of Ellsworth County, asking
if the warrant were still out. He was informed that it
was and that extradition papers would be forwarded at
once.

Ben arrived in a lather from Wichita, where he was
doing well as a gambler, and did everything he could to
keep Billy from being taken back to Kansas. A ludicrous
tangle of legal maneuvers followed, but Billy was ex
tradited and lodged in the Ellsworth jail.

A crowd was at the depot to meet him and the Texas
officers. There were threats of lynching. Three days later
Sheriff Hamilton removed Billy to Salina. Fear that he
would be taken from the Salina jail and either rescued
by his friends or lynched by his enemies became so great
that he was brought to Leavenworth and lodged in the
state penitentiary.

Ignoring the dagger he ran, Ben returned to Ellsworth
to engage counsel for Billy and line up witnesses for the
defense. Trial was set for the March term of court, but
defense witnesses were so widely scattered that Billy's
attorney got a postponement, and it was not until Sep
tember 5 that the trial began. It lasted for nine days.
When the jury got the case, they deliberated for only
an hour before bringing in a unanimous verdict of not
guilty.

It had cost Ben Thompson a pretty penny. He had
put up everything he owned. If there was little about him

152 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

to admire, it could never be said that he failed to come
through for Billy*

In the spring of '78 an item in the Dodge City Globe
states that Billy Thompson, well known on the cattle
trails, was in Dodge.

Ben was there too. His friend William Barclay (Bat)
Masterson had just been installed as the sheriff of Ford
County. A few months later a story involving the Thomp
sons and Bat was widely circulated. The best reason for
including it in this narrative is that Bat never denied
his part in it. Fred Sutton, who is always interesting in
his Hands Up but often draws the long bow and is care
less with his facts, labels it true. Buffalo Bill Cody, a
participant, not only acknowledged his part in it but
added some touches of his own,

Billy Thompson went up the trail to Ogallala and
promptly got into trouble. In an argument during a
poker game he shot and killed a cowboy and was himself
badly wounded. The story has it that the dead man's
friends put Billy in a hotel room under guard and were
waiting for him to get well enough so they could hang
him. Ben went to Masterson for help.

It is true enough that in his days as a buffalo hunter
Bat had been jumped by some roughs in a saloon in old
Tascosa. Ben, according to Sutton, had leaped across his
faro layout and saved Bat's life. So, in asking the latter
to help Billy, Ben had some justification.

In writing of Bat Masterson, Bob Wright, the first
mayor of Dodge City, said: "Bat was a most loyal man
to his friends. If anyone did him a favor he never forgot
it" T

Ben explained that he couldn't go into Ogallala with
out being recognized. "If I showed up there they would
know I had come to rescue Billy and they'd lynch him

FACT VERSUS FICTION 153

right off so as to make sure. I want yon to go up there
and bring Billy out."

"Billy isn't worth saving, but 111 do it for you, Ben."

Bat went as far as Hays City that night and reached
Ogallala two days later. Though he had never been in
Ogallala before, there were half a hundred or more
Texans in town who knew him from Dodge and he knew
he could not keep his identity a secret for long,

Ben Thompson had given him the names of a few
friends. Bat looked them up and learned where Billy was
being held prisoner, with a guard at his door night and
day. After arranging with Ben's friends to create a di
version by shooting up a dance-hall across the way when
the midnight train for the east pulled in, he got a room
on the same floor of the third-rate hotel with Billy.

He had no difficulty making friends with Billy's guard.
After plying him with liquor for an hour, the man fell
into a drunken stupor. Bat still had better than half an
hour to wait.

When the eastbound Union Pacific express blew for
Ogallala, a rattle of gunfire broke out across the street.
Wrapping Billy in a blanket, Bat carried him down to
the depot and climbed aboard the train with Trim.

Cody was living in North Platte at the time. Bat had
wired him to be at the station with a horse and buggy
when the express arrived. Bill was there. Billy Thomp
son was put into the rig and driven to Cody's house at
once. By the end of the week he was sufficiently recovered
to travel.

Cody had sent a man over to Ogallala to pick up Bat's
horse at the livery barn where it had been left. Borrowing
a team and rig from Cody, with his own mount trailing
behind on a lead rope, Bat set out across the prairie for
Dodge, 8

Whether the foregoing actually happened or is just

154 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

another of the countless tales that were told about Master-
son, it was the sort of an adventure that would have ap
pealed to him, and not beyond his capabilities. He was
sound physically at the time. It was not until he had been
defeated for re-election that he went down to Fort
Elliott, in the Texas Panhandle, and was shot in the leg
by Sergeant King and took to using a cane.

Save for perhaps a casual mention, Billy Thompson
now disappears from the pages of this narrative. Ben,
too, soon disappeared from the prairie cow towns. He
still had a lot of history to make, but it was to be played
out against the rugged backdrop of Colorado and his
native Texas.

CHAPTER XV

LAWLESS NEWTON

BF NEWTON'S importance as a market
for Texas cattle was brief, it estab
lished a new low for violence and in
famy among the cow towns. The AtcMson, Topeka and
Santa Fe put its rails into Newton in July 1871. The
stockyards, a mile and a half west of town, built under
Joe McCoy's supervision, were soon ready, and by
August 15, two thousand head of Longhorns had been
shipped. The season was half gone, but Newton compiled
a total of forty thousand before it was over. The figure
was much greater in '72. But that was all; before the
season of '73 arrived, the rails of the infant railroad
down to Wichita had been laid. As a shipping point
Newton was finished.

That completion of the Wichita and Southwestern
would have disastrous results for Newton was too obvi
ous not to be realized. And yet bonds to the value of
$200,000 were voted to help build it. Newton registered
its unanimous protest, but it did not have sufficient votes
to block it.

A bit of explanation is necessary. What was to become
Harvey County was not yet organized. The six lower
townships were a part of Sedgwick County, of which

155

156 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

Wichita was the county seat. In its entirety it was a land-
grant county, with title resting with the Atchison, Topeka
and Santa Fe. Though Bill Greiffenstein and Jim Meade,
Jesse Chisholm's old friends, and others were the ostensi
ble moving spirits behind the Wichita and Southwestern,
the Santa Fe very likely had a finger in it, for it was a
foregone conclusion that once the infant road was in
operation that, by one means or another, the Santa Fe
could take it over and incorporate it into the Santa Fe
System.

Though the Santa Fe did not reach Newton until July,
the townsite, east of Sand Creek, had been surveyed and
plotted as early as March of that year and the first build
ing placed on it. The first dwelling, built by A. F. Homer
in Brookville, Kansas, in the early 1870 's was dragged
across the prairie to Newton and won the lots offered by
the town's promoters to the first resident. This house of
Horner 's had a peripatetic history. It had first been moved
from Brookville to Florence, then to Newton, and ended
its days in Hutchinson, winning the prize for first occu
pancy in each instance. 1

A blacksmith shop was actually the first building
erected in Newton. On April 17 work was begun on its
first hotel the Newton House. The rush to Newton fol
lowed. Lumber was teamed in night and day. By August
15 there were two hundred houses and stores in Newton,
most of them literally just thrown together. There were
very few places with a sidewalk. The drainage was poor,
and after the grass had been chewed out of Main Street,
the business street, wheels sank to the hubs following a
wet spell. Twenty-seven places were selling liquor, under
a county license fee of $150.

The saloon names were familiar Bull's Head, Lone
Star. The Gold Room was the most elegant of the lot, but
it didn't rate with the fabulous Alamo of Abilene. No

LAWLESS NEWTON 157

Kansas cow town did until Whitey Rupp opened Ms
saloon and gambling emporium in Wichita.

Old newspaper accounts of the number of cowboys in
this or that cow town on a given date seem to be ex
aggerated. The figure given for Newton was two thousand,
which is to be doubted, though thousands of Longhorns
were coming to Newton, in response to the inducements
Santa Fe freight agents were making to shippers. How
ever many there were, Newton was prepared to offer
them the entertainment and diversion they sought.

For the first six months of its existence it had no town
government, no civic body to administer law and order.
The only authority rested in the township organization
and it was too weak and shadowy to offer adequate pro
tection. Actually Newton was a town without law.
"Bloody and lawless Newton, the wickedest town in
Kansas," was the reputation given it. It exactly suited
the horde of thugs, sharpers, gamblers, prostitutes, and
panderers who flocked there. There are different shades
of depravity. Newton got the blackest scum that would
not have been tolerated in Abilene and Ellsworth even
in their wildest days.

The iron horse had not yet appeared when two men
were killed. Two cowboys, Welch and Snyder by name,
met in front of Gregory's Saloon on the west side of
Main Street and settled an argument with gunfire. Welch
died where he fell. Three days later a man named Irvin,
not a Texan, was accidentally killed by a pistol shot in
the Parlor Saloon, a few doors from Val Gregory's place.
After the railroad arrived, the killings came fast.

In the southwest corner of the townsite. and only a
short walk removed from the business section of the
town, a tough district, known far and wide as "Hide
Park" came into being. The two largest buildings were
dance-halls; one owned by Ed Krum and the other by

158 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

Perry Tuttle. They stood a few yards apart and sur
rounding them were other buildings, cut up into cubicles,
in which White, Mexican, and mulatto whores of the
lowest type did a thriving business.

Tuttle 's dance-hall was the more popular of the two
places; his band was better and the girls he employed
were younger. It was part of their job to hustle their
partners up to the bar, located at one side of the dance
floor, between the short dances. Across from the bar,
you had your choice of faro, monte, and other games.

All through the night, Sundays included, there was a
constant going back and forth between Tuttle 's and
Krum's. The grass was soon worn off by this darkness-
to-dawn parading of cowboys from one place to the other
for new dancing partners.

In self -protection the gamblers and saloonkeepers had
to have some semblance of law and order to restrain their
obstreperous customers. An arrangement was worked out
with township officials. A deputy sheriff and a constable
were assigned to police the town, with the widely known
Mike McClusMe acting as night policeman, the expense
of this arrangement being taken care of from a fund
raised by the gamblers and saloon men. This was given a
better face by being called a town license tax. Two jus
tices of the peace were assigned to Newton, where they
were sorely needed.

No one satisfactorily explained why the towering,
handsome, two-fisted Irishman known as Art Donovan,
and employed by the Santa Fe to keep order in its con
struction crews as the tracks moved west, changed his
name to Mike McClusMe in Newton. That he was an
arrogant, hot-tempered man cannot be doubted That he
was brave to the point of fearlessness is equally apparent.
He was an inveterate gambler. If he had not been, he
might well have missed becoming the central figure in the

LAWLESS NEWTON 159

bloodiest night in Newton's history. Andreas spells the
name MeCloskey. 2

The first recorded killing in "Hide Park" occurred on
August 3. Newton was in the midst of its first big cattle
boom. The town was going wild. In Perry Tuttle's place
in Hide Park the band was blaring its loudest when a
group of well-liquored cowpunchers good-naturedly (so
it was said) tried to bull their way into the crowded
dance-hall. Suddenly a shot rang out, and a young Texan
named Lee pitched out on the floor, shot through the
head. One of his friends had killed him. It had to be con
sidered an accident ; there had been no quarrel. Other men
lost their lives in Hide Park. How many will never be
known.

In the volume in the American Guide Series devoted
to Kansas, it is stated that, " although this phase of
Newton's growth [its days as a cattle market] only lasted
until ... the railroad was extended to Wichita, fifty
persons are estimated to have met sudden death in its
saloons and dance-halls." 2 This is undoubtedly an ex
aggeration. Twenty-five would be nearer the truth. Judge
R. W. Muse in his History of Harvey County puts the
number at twelve. 3

On August 11, only a few weeks after the Santa Fe
reached Newton, an election was held that the citizens
might vote on the proposition of subscribing bonds for
the building of the Wichita and Southwestern Eailroad.

Of the election George D. Wolfe says: "It was an oc
casion much to the town's liking. Bawdy and riotous by
predilection, it rose to the celebration [sic] with real
frontier abandon to a day of unadulterated hell raising.
To meet ^he situation a special deputy was sworn in to
assist the 'Law'. This individual was a hard-case gam
bler, drunkard and trouble-maker named Bill Wilson who
went under the name of Bailey. He was the very worst

160 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

choice for such duty ... As a peace officer he was no more
than a very dangerous clown with a badge. " 4 Wolfe's
use of the word " celebration " is not justified. Newton
could hardly have turned out to celebrate its own demise.
There was violence all day long, and it had been predicted.

Bailey drank heavily throughout the day and became
progressively more abusive and insulting at the voting
booth. When he began to badger the election officials,
MikeMcCluskie got hold of him and hustled him outside.
He had had trouble with Bailey before. The deep enmity
between them was well known. "He damned Bailey from
high heaven to the deepest pit of hell," says Wolfe, "and,
figuratively speaking, turned him wrong-side out for the
crows to pick. All Newton stood aghast at such eloquence,
such righteous indignation. " 5

McCluskie and Bailey came together that evening in
the Red Front Saloon, on east Main Street. Bailey, still
drunk, called on McCluskie to set up the drinks for the
crowd. Mike refused; he did not want any truck with
Bailey. The latter foolishly tried to strike him with his
fist. McCluskie drove him back with a blow that sent him
staggering through the swing door and out into the
street.

Bailey continued across the street and stood leaning
over the hitch-rack in front of the Blue Front clothing
store, a pistol in his hand. The first thing McCluskie saw
when he stepped out of the Red Front was Bailey wait
ing, six-gun in hand. Mike fired two shots. The first
bullet went wide and buried itself in the Blue Front's
door. The second slug caught Bailey in the right side and
almost reached the heart. He was taken to the nearby
Santa Fe Hotel and carried upstairs.

Gass Boyd, the town's only reputable doctor, did Ms
best to save Bailey. He was still alive at daylight, but
expired soon after. McCluskie lived at the National Hotel.

LAWLESS NEWTON 161

He was still in bed when young Jim Riley, his staunchest
admirer and constant shadow, brought the news to his
door. McCluskie dressed and, foregoing breakfast,
caught the morning train east.

It is generally believed that he went only as far as
Florence. Newton couldn't understand why he should
have run; it was the unanimous opinion of the witnesses
to the shooting that it was justified.

Mike had a solid reason for fleeing. Bailey was a
Texan, and even with all his faults he was popular with
a certain wild element among them. That they would
band together to avenge Bailey seemed altogether likely.
Given a few days in which to cool off, they might be of a
different mind. That was McCluskie 's reasoning and he
so explained it when he returned to Newton on Saturday,
August 19, after an absence of a week. His friend Jim
Eiley was on hand to warn him that his life was in danger ;
that Hugh Anderson, a reckless, hell-raising puncher
from Bell County, Texas, and a group of Ms friends had
sworn to kill him on sight.

In delving into the lore of the cow towns, characters
appear, play their brief moment on the stage, and then
disappear into thin air. Some of them are mere creatures
of the imagination, born out of saloon and cow-camp
talk. Jim Riley, the tubercular boy of eighteen who fol
lowed Mike McCluskie about Newton like a faithful
puppy, was real enough. He appears in every written
account of turbulent Newton in '71. There are differences
of opinion about the Mastersons, the Earps, Wild Bill,
and a host of characters, but all sources are in solid
agreement when it comes to Jim Riley- "Who he was,
where he came from, and what became of him following
the massacre in Perry Tuttle's dance-hall on the night
of Saturday, August 19, is not known.

Mike McCluskie was a lone wolf, much in the way

162 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

that Tom Smith of Abilene was. He kept all men at a
distance and his only close acquaintance was ragged Jim
Riley. He took the gaunt kid under his wing, saw that he
had enough to eat, and befriended him when he got into
trouble, which was seldom enough, for he was a quiet,
inoffensive youngster. "He followed Mike like a shadow,
a silent emaciated specter, who wore a pair of Colts at
his snake-like hips," says Wolfe. "A feverish light
burned in his hollow, deep-set eyes. His devotion to Mc-
Cluskie was almost worshipful . . . Ordinarily in the bedlam
of Newton, Eiley would hardly have been noticed a
scarecrow not worth a bullet had it not been for his
friendship for Mike." 6

The group of Texans who had sworn to avenge the
killing of Bill Bailey quickly learned that McClusMe was
back in Newton, All through the hot August afternoon
there was talk in the saloons that they were going to "get "
Mike that night. Hugh Anderson, the leader, was the same
Hugh Anderson who had helped Wes Hardin to run down
Bideno, the Mexican who had killed Billy Chorn on the
North Cottonwood. Lined up with Anderson were two
old-time Texas companions, Bill G-arrett and Henry
Kearnes, also Jim Wilkerson, a Kentuckian, and several
other Lone Star men.

Though Jim Eiley had warned McCluskie, who had had
the same information from others, he scorned the warn
ings, and some time after ten o'clock, he crossed the
tracks and went down to Perry Turtle's place in Hide
Park. The news that he was there spread quickly. There
was a grim nodding of heads among the Texans ; Anderson
and his friends now had McCluskie where they wanted
him. Those who were cautious went over to Krum's to
avoid getting in the way of any stray lead.

Unaware of what impended, Happy Jim Martin, as
fine a cowboy as ever came up the trail rode into Newton

LAWLESS NEWTON 163

from where the herd he was with was "bedded down on the
Little Arkansas. He took a room at the Santa Fe Hotel.
After he had scrubbed himself clean, he sat down to a
hearty supper in a nighthawk restaurant. It was after
eleven when he finished. But it was Saturday night and he
had come a long way for a little fun and an opportunity
to swap talk with old friends. Knowing he would find a
number of them in Tuttle's dance-hall, he set out for
Hide Park without a care on his mind.

To his surprise the place was not as crowded as he
expected to find it. As for the friends he had hoped to see,
they were not there. But the music made his feet itch and
the girls were inviting. That was good for him.

Perry Tuttle's behavior was proof enough that he knew
what was afoot and didn't want it to happen in his place.
He tried to close up at one o'clock but the crowd howled
him down. When it got to be two o 'clock, he could stand
the strain no longer. He dismissed the musicians for the
night. But the stage was set for what was to follow and
the climax came before the crowd thinned out.

McCluskie was seated at a faro layout in the corner.
6 ' One of Hugh Anderson's men sat talking to him with the
evident intention of distracting his attention in order
to allow one of the group to strike the death blow," says
Streeter. "Others [in on the plot] stood back watching
and waiting for their leader to enter, their eyes roving
alternately from McCluskie to the door. ' ' 7

Anderson walked in, his pistol in his hand, and, crossing
the floor, confronted his victim. He had been living with
this moment for hours, and as he approached McCluskie
his nerves seemed to snap and he fairly shrieked, "You
are a cowardly son of a bitch! I'm going to blow the top
of your head off!"

The bullet he fired passed through McCluskie 's neck.
Mike got halfway to his feet and, leveling his six-shooter

164 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

at Anderson's breast, squeezed the trigger. The charge
failed to explode. With blood streaming from his wound
and still trying to fire his weapon, big Mike tumbled to
the floor. Anderson put a second bullet into him and then,
bending over the prostrate man, fired a third time. As he
straightened up, Garrett, Kearnes, and Wilkerson dis
charged their revolvers.

Before the first shot was fired, young Jim Martin had
leaped forward in a foolish attempt to effect a reconcilia
tion. Other spectators had sought what safety they could
find, but young Martin was still out on the floor, pleading
with Anderson and his friends, when Jim Biley, the laugh
ing stock of the town, appeared in the open doorway. Some
accounts say he had been lounging unnoticed in a corner,
waiting for McCluskie to finish playing; others have it
that he had been outside and through the window saw
Mike go down and did not come in until Wilkerson,
Garrett, and Kearnes began emptying their pistols reck
lessly, hitting no one but holding the crowd helpless.
However it was, Jim Biley was suddenly transformed
into an avenging Nemesis. He threw off his momentary
hesitation. He swept up his six-guns and a sheet of flame
came from them.

Jim Martin was the first man struck. A slug severed his
jugular vein. He staggered out of Turtle's place and got
as far as the door of Ed Krum's dance-hall before he
dropped dead. Hugh Anderson was cut down. So were
Wilkerson, Kearnes, and Garrett.

In the hail of lead that came from Jim Eiley's pistols,
several men who were innocent bystanders were hit. Pat
Lee, freight-train brakesman, was seriously wounded in
the abdomen. A track foreman named Hickey received a
leg wound. When Jim Biley's revolvers were empty, he
vanished into the night. No one tried to stop him. Where
he went and what became of him is as deep a mystery

LAWLESS NEWTON 165

today as it was that night. He was never seen nor heard
of again. That he had been struck and crawled off to die
in the brush like a wounded animal is as good a guess as
any.

McCluskie had received three wounds, any one of which
would have been fatal. He died early Sunday morning.
At the request of Dr. E. B. Allen, coroner of Sedgwick
County, Cy Bowman, a Newton lawyer, held an inquest
over the bodies of McCluskie and Martin. The verdict
arrived at was that "Martin came to his death at the
hands of some person unknown; that McCluskie came
to his death at 8 o'clock, A.M. this 20th, day of August
by a shot from a pistol in the hands of Hugh Anderson,
and that the said shooting was done feloniously and with
intent to kill McCluskie."

A warrant was issued for the arrest of Anderson. With
G-arrett, Hickey, and Wilkerson he had been moved to a
room at the rear of Hoff's grocery store. Later that day
G-arrett died. On Tuesday Pat Lee passed away.

Five men dead, several more wounded. That was the
score. The town seethed. Leading gamblers, saloonkeepers,
and responsible citizens held a hurried meeting. Tom
Carson, who had served as Wild Bill's deputy in Abilene,
was in town. It was decided to employ him as marshal at
their own expense. To aid him in keeping the town quiet,
he had a deputy sheriff and a constable.

The Texans, aroused over the warrant issued on
Anderson, threatened to kill Carson. A number of citizens
armed themselves with shotguns and other weapons and
patrolled the street with him. That ended the disturbance.

A week passed. The police were standing by, waiting to
arrest Anderson as soon as he could be moved. Anderson's
father, a respected Texan, arrived in Newton and enlisted
the support of his friends to get his son out of town.
A Santa Fe passenger conductor was bribed to leave the

166 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

morning train for the east standing overnight a short
distance down the track from the depot and at the rear of
Hoff 's store. In the early hours of Monday morning young
Anderson was placed aboard one of the cars and locked
in the water closet.

Marshal Carson went through the train before it pulled
out, but failed to find Anderson. His absence was dis
covered soon after the train left. It was not due in Kansas
City until that evening. A telegram to the police there
would have led to the man's arrest. It was not sent.

The Kansas City police were well informed about the
tragedy in Newton and had been for days. And yet, having
no requisition for Anderson, they did not take him into
custody when he stumbled off the train. Friends placed
him in a hack and he was driven off. He was in Kansas
City for ten days before he was able to face the long
journey to Texas.

Though Anderson was back in Bell County, and re
ceived the best of care, he never recovered from his
wounds. He was dead three years later.

The blood bath Newton had received failed to sober it.
A horse thief was caught at the stockyards, and, no tree
being handy, a rail was placed across the fence corner
and he was hanged from it. Before the season was over,
two men were killed on Main Street.

With the coming of winter the town had its first taste
of peace. When several leading citizens, among them
genial W. H. (Pop) Anderson (no relation to Hugh Ander
son), started a campaign to organize Newton and Harvey
County, they encountered little opposition. Newton had
had more than its share of violence.

CHAPTER XVI

THE DEATH OF A COW TOWN

JEWTON was incorporated as a city of
the third class early in February
1872, and on the last day of the month
Harvey County was organized. This was accomplished by
assuming a $70,000 share of the bonds voted for the
construction of the Wichita and Southwestern Railroad.
Newton was designated as the county seat. An election
was held in April and Pop Anderson was elected mayor.
Billy Brooks, who drove stage between Newton and
"Wichita, was appointed city marshal.

Billy Brooks wrote his name in rather large letters
before he disappeared from Kansas some years later.
He wore his hair long, in the fashion of Buffalo Bill Cody,
and though he was only of medium height, he was a
picturesque figure. He had the tenacity of a bulldog and
in his Newton days was generally credited with being fear
less. He had killed several men, justifiably, it was said,
which added to his stature as Newton's first city marshal.
That he gave a good account of "himself is attested by the
fact that after he resigned, later in the year, he became
the first town marshal of rambunctious Dodge City. At
the time, Dodge was not yet an incorporated town.

Brook's favorite weapon as he patrolled Newton was a

167

168 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

Winchester rifle. That was his habit in Dodge, too, and
of the twelve to fourteen killings attributed to him all
were by rifle fire.

In agreeing to assume part of the railroad bonds Newton
had stipulated that construction begin at its end of the
line. The year 1872 got off to a rowdy start as graders
and tracklayers gathered in Newton and work began.
Brooks and Charlie Bauman, the assistant marshal, bore
down hard on the brawling crew and kept them in line.
But they were no sooner gone than the first herds of the
season began to arrive. Texas cowboys could not be
handled the way construction workers were. June was not
a week old before Billy Brooks was shot three times.

He had run three drunken cowpunchers out of town.
Halfway out to the stockyards, they turned and fired.
One bullet struck him in the right breast, two lodged in
his legs. He was mounted and so were they. Having shot
the marshal, they fled. Brooks took after them and chased
them for ten miles before his condition became so grave
that he had to return to town and a doctor. He was in
capacitated for some time. When he recovered, he resigned
and went to Dodge.

Charlie Bauman took his place. He was a phlegmatic
German and a brave officer, though his shooting accuracy
was decidedly second-rate. Serving with him was big Jack
Johnson. Johnson had a fast draw and was a recognized
dead-shot. It was the sort of reputation a peace officer
needed if he were to survive. As a result Johnson went
through the summer with very little trouble; Charlie
Bauman never seemed to be out of it.

As a civic improvement two public wells had been put
down by the city. One was at the intersection of Fifth and
Main, the other at Sixth and Main. There were many
privately owned wells in Newton, but if you didn't have
one, you used the public wells. Each was surrounded by a

THE DEATH OF A COW TOWN 160

stone coping several feet high. When trouble broke out,
the coping provided a vantage point for the police. Crouch
ing behind it, they had an unobstructed view up and down
Main Street that permitted them to locate the scene of
the disturbance.

Charlie Bauman was coming up Main Street after
dinner in the early afternoon, when several shots rang
out. He ran to the well at the intersection of Fifth and
Main. Halfway up the block, opposite the Bull's Head
Saloon, he saw the familiar figure of Cherokee Ban Hicks,
a half-breed, off on another spree, enjoying himself by
emptying his pistols at the sign above the doors of the
Bull's Head. This was by way of being a repetition of
the incident in Abilene some years back, though the New
ton bull had never aroused any public indignation.

Bauman ran up, calling on Cherokee Dan to desist.
When Hicks ignored the summons, Bauman fired and
missed. Dropping to one knee, he took deliberate aim and
fired a second shot, inflicting a slight flesh wound. The
half-breed returned the shots, his first striking the marshal
in the right thigh and the second clipping off his right
thumb. There isn't much doubt that he would have killed
Bauman if Gass Boyd had not run in between the two
men and talked Cherokee Dan into putting his pistols
away. Boyd, being a doctor, the best in town and always
a neutral, had more influence over such men as Dan
Hicks than the law.

Bauman recovered from his wounds, but he was lamed
for life.

Today a bronze plate marks the site of the well at Fifth
Street and Main, honoring Captain David L. Payne, who
dug it. Payne was to become one of the most controversial
figures in Kansas, and in many parts of the nation as
well. Wherever land-hungry men and women listened to
him, they became his devoted followers. Payne County,

170 WHJ>, WOOLLY ASTO WICKED

Oklahoma, was named for him. Oklahoma owes him a
great debt, for he, more than any other man, was respon
sible for opening it to white settlement. His detractors
labeled him an agitator and rabble-rouser; his followers
saw him as a devoted zealot laboring in their behalf.

Honors had come to Dave Payne before his days in
Newton, He had served three years with the troops of the
Union during the Civil War, and had been elected to the
Kansas legislature in 1864 He was later sergeant at arms
of that body and postmaster at Leavenworth. He was a
captain in the 18th Kansas Cavalry for service against
the plains Indians in 1867, and the following year served
as captain in the 19th Kansas Cavalry. Shortly after the
Battle of the Washita he joined Custer and the 7th TL S.
Cavalry. It was this service in the Indian Territory that
opened his eyes to the possibility of throwing those lands
open to white settlement.

It was after he had served a second term in the Kansas
legislature and secured appointment as assistant door
keeper in the House of Representatives in Washington
that he began his long fight to open the unassigned lands
in the Indian Territory and the Cherokee Outlet, holding
that they were Government land and therefore subject to
homesteading.

Payne organized bands of "boomers" and made re
peated efforts to settle colonists on the lands mentioned,
and was just as often arrested and expelled by the U. S.
Army* On February 1, 1883, he started from Arkansas
City, Kansas, with 132 wagons, 552 men, and 3 women,
crossed the line bound for the North Canadian. "The
weather was bitter cold. When the cavalcade reached the
Salt Fork [of the Arkansas] near the old 101 ranch the ice
was so thick that every wagon crossed the river on the ice.
The boomers reached the site of Oklahoma City and went
into camp at about the site of present Wheeler Park/' *

THE DEATH OF A COW TOWN 171

The colonists had hardly more than made camp when
troops from Fort Reno appeared and arrested Payne
and the other leaders of the expedition. They were kept
under guard that night, with all others being warned that
those who remained until morning would also be arrested.
When morning arrived, the camp was deserted.

From first to last Payne's difficulties were due to a
belated and wholly unexpected outburst of solicitude for
the rights of its Indian wards by the Government of the
United States. It had broken or repudiated every treaty
it had made with the various tribes, but it now insisted
that the so-called "unassigned lands" were not un-
assigned at all but had been purchased by the Federal
Government from the Creeks and Seminoles in 1866 and
with the lands in the Cherokee Outlet were being held in
fee simple for the Cherokee Nation.

Payne made no further attempt to invade forbidden
"Old Oklahoma" that year; by the following spring he
had a large company assembled in the Cherokee Outlet, a
few miles to the south and east of Hunnewell, Kansas.
This camp of 1500 persons was located on the north bank
of the Chikaskia River.

It certainly was Payne's idea that if the Bock Falls
Colony could continue to attract more and more members
the settlement would soon be so formidable that the
Government would be forced to reverse its position. To
achieve his purpose, he needed more and more favorable
publicity. But the tide had set in against Mm. He was
under constant attack in many newspapers. To counteract
it, he published his own newspaper. The Oklahoma War
Chief. Though he was hard pressed for money, thousands
of copies were run off on a Washington hand press and
given wide circulation.

Publication of The Oklahoma War Chief brought
matters to a head. Troops moved in; Payne and half a

172 WILD, WOOLLY AKD WICKED

dozen others were put in irons and dragged to Fort Smith,
Arkansas, to face Isaac Parker, the "Hanging Judge. "
The rest of the colonists were sent back across the Kansas
border. After some delay Captain Payne and his asso
ciates were released without warrants being issued against
them. Though they were free, the boomer movement was
broken.

Payne continued to expound his ideas and attract
audiences wherever he spoke. The Wellington, Kansas,
News says that he spoke there on the evening of November
27, 1884, and "addressed a large assemblage and in
earnest words and with sublime faith in the justice of
his cause, he pleaded for the opening of Oklahoma to
settlement."

He retired to his room at the Barnard Hotel for the
night. In the morning, as he was eating breakfast, he
dropped dead. He occupies an obscure and forgotten
grave in a Wellington cemetery. His passing created a
sensation. Commenting on the death of Payne, Fred
Sutton, who was a member of the Rock Falls Colony, says :
"His friends believed then, and I believe yet, that he was
poisoned by those who opposed the opening of Oklahoma.
His death filled the Oklahoma boomers with resentment,
focused public attention upon the opening of the territory,
and hastened it. David L. Payne, who gave his best years,
and eventually his life, to the cause was to that movement
what John Brown of Ossawatomie was to the campaign
to free the slaves." 2

The organized opposition to Payne's policies came
from the various societies, possessing strong political
power, who described themselves as Friends of the Amer
ican Indian. Lined up with them were the trail drivers
and cattlemen of the Cherokee Strip Livestock Associa
tion. But the pressure against them became so great that

THE DEATH OF A COW TOWN 173

the Federal Government had to act. Following a policy
of appeasement, Oklahoma was opened in sections. The
first break came soon after Payne ? s death, but it was not
until September 16, 1893, almost ten years after Payne's
mysterious demise, that the Cherokee Strip was thrown
open and ten thousand men and women gathered along the
Kansas border from Arkansas City to Caldwell and made
the great run r with free farms or town lots awaiting those
who were lucky,

If cow-town Newton saw in Dave Payne only a sober-
minded young army officer and rising politician, it saw
even less in a young German-born immigrant by the
name of Bernard Warkentin, though his coming was to
mean more to Newton and Harvey County than all the
thousands of Longhorns that came bawling up from
Texas. Warkentin was a farmer and miller, and the first
of the Mennonites to reach Kansas, an unknown religious
sect that had migrated from Germany to Russia during
the reign of Catherine the Great for greater religious
freedom. They had found it for a time, but the clock had
come full circle and they were looking to America now.

Warkentin was their agent. He was in Kansas looking
for a new home for his people, all tillers of the soil, where
land was cheap and could be made productive, and where
they would be free to worship as they pleased. He settled
at Halstead, a hamlet twelve miles west of Newton, and
established a small flour mill operated by water from the
Little Arkansas River.

To the Immigration Department of the Santa Fe must
go credit for encouraging Warkentin to induce his kinsmen
to leave the Russian steppes for the Kansas prairies.
Many of these devout, industrious people settled near
Newton, introducing an Old World culture to the region
and greatly furthering its : agricultural development.

174 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

"They arrived with money enough to buy land and sur
vive the grasshopper plague of '74. More important than
their savings was the bushel or so of hand-picked hard
* Turkey Bed' wheat carefully stowed away in the baggage
of each family . . . The Russian grain was perfectly
adapted to these (the semi-arid prairies) conditions.
Prom this beginning developed -the vast wheat fields,
which now give Kansas ranking among the great wheat-
growing States/' 8

From the first it was the Santa Fe's intention to make
Newton a division point and build its shops there. The
first try at it failed, when the water supply proved in
adequate, but when that was corrected, Newton was
officially designated a main-line division point and its
prosperity assured

After several vexatious delays, due to the non-arrival
of material, the Wichita and Southwestern had got
straightened out and construction was proceeding at such
a rapid pace it was freely predicted that the road would
be completed by June. The contractors did better than
that. On May 16 the rails reached Wichita. It settled the
fate of Newton as a cattle market. A noticeable exodus of
undesirables to Wichita set in at once. But the killings
continued. Policeman Jack Johnson was moved up a notch
and was appointed city marshal.

Of all of Newton's saloonkeepers the only one of real
stature was popular Harry Lovett. When the town faded,
he opened a place in Wichita. Later on he was in business
in Bodge. He was accounted a handy man with a gun. He
lived up to his reputation when Cherokee Dan Hicks went
on another tear. After terrorizing several other saloons
the half-breed sauntered into Lovett 's place and began
shooting at the collection of painted nudes that decorated
the walls. Lovett was behind the bar. Seizing a pistol, he
put five bullets into Cherokee Dan's anatomy.

THE DEATH OF A COW TOWN 175

Newton was delighted to have Cherokee Dan removed
from its midst. Lovett appeared before Justice of the
Peace Halliday, who held the killing justified.

Halliday was in for trouble of his own, though it had
no connection with the slaying of Hicks. As was his
habit, he dropped into the Gold Room Saloon on the
morning of November 7 for a toddy before going to his
office. Pat Pitzpatrick, a troublesome character who had
been employed at the stockyards, walked into the Gold
Boom. Recognizing the judge, he asked him to set up the
drinks. The judge refused, and after a few angry words
Fitzpatrick drew a revolver and killed bi-m.

Marshal Johnson was only half a block away when he
heard the shot. He rushed into Hamil's Hardware Store
and secured a rifle and then ran out to the well at the
intersection of Fifth and Main. Only seconds passed
before he saw Fitzpatrick coming up the sidewalk, weav
ing drunkenly and singing at the top of his voice. Johnson
was ignorant of the fact that Judge Halliday had been
killed ; so far as he knew, he had only a drunken man to
take into custody.

As Fitzpatrick crossed Fifth Street, Johnson picked up
his Winchester from the well coping and called out to
Fitzpatriek to stop and throw up his hands. Fitzpatriek
laughed and reached for his pistol. The marshal didn't
hesitate. Throwing the rifle to his shoulder, he fired, the
bullet striking Fitzpatrick in the forehead and killing Mm
instantly.

The slaying of Judge Halliday aroused the town. The
mayor ordered the saloons to close and swore in five
temporary policemen to see that the order was obeyed
and to maintain law and order.

This was tantamount to locking the barn door after
the horse had been stolen. It was November. The

176 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

cattle season was over. Newton's violence belonged in
the past and it was free at last to settle down to the
humdrum existence of a peaceful and prosperous farming
town.

CHAPTER XVH

WICHITA TAKES OVER

estimated 400,000 Texas Longhorns
entered Sedgwiek County in 1873,
Wichita's big year. At first glance tlie
figure seems fantastic, but when broken down it becomes
fairly realistic. Though the financial crisis that swept the
country in mid-September sent beef prices tumbling and
resulted in almost complete stagnation of the cattle
market, the season was largely over. When disaster
struck there were between one hundred and one hundred
fifty thousand head of Texas steers being held on the
Ninnescah, the Arkansas (the "Little River* 5 ), Cowskin,
Clearwater, Wildcat, Gypsum, and Chisholm creeks. With
the market in collapse they had to be kept where they
were. Conditions for wintering stock in Sedgwiek County
were vastly more favorable than on the open prairie at
Abilene and Ellsworth. With an abundance of good grass,
some protection against the elements, and a mild winter,
losses were held to the Tnl-nlrmmn.

Based on such figures as are available, one can say
that the business of buying Texas cattle and driving them
to the various Indian reservations reached its peak at
Wichita. With the possible exception of Caldwell, no other
Kansas market, including Bodge City, was so favorably

177

178 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

located for contracting cattle for the Government agencies.
Very likely as much as 20 per cent of all the Texas cattle
reaching Sedgwick County that year were disposed of in
that manner. Other thousands were sold to Northern
stockmen and driven to Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana
ranges. That between fifty and sixty thousand were
shipped by rail cannot be doubted. The Wichita and
Southwestern was swamped with business. Night and
day stock trains steamed out of the Wichita stockyards.
The Santa Fe did not leave this rich plum dangling for
long before it took over.

Wichita had been plotted in 1870. When it became a
cattle market in 1872 it was an organized city of the
second class, with a town government and a presumably
adequate police force a presumption that proved a
grievous error. It was a solid town, so favorably located
that it could, without undue optimism, look forward to
becoming the permanent metropolis of the Texas cattle
trade. It was but some sixty miles from the border. As yet,
there was only a sprinkling of farmers, with their con
founded barbed wire, to harass the trail drivers, in
southern Sedgwick County.

The confidence of its leading citizens in its future was
expressed in the permanency of the buildings that were
erected along Douglas Avenue, its principal street. Its
hotels were not so large as the fabulous Drovers 7 Cottage
of Abilene, but their appointments were better and they
set tables that were unrivaled in the cow-town era. The
Occidental, the Douglas Avenue Hotel, the Texas House,
a rendezvous for Texas owners, were the best. When
Whitey Rupp opened the Keno House, at the corner of
Douglas Avenue and Main Street, it was the most elegant
gambling and drinking establishment west of the Missis
sippi. As an advertisement and "to liven things up," as
he put it, he brought a brass band from Kansas City and

WICHITA TAKES OVEK 179

perched it on a second-floor porch of the Keno House,
where they played every night for hours.

Wichita was leaving nothing to chance. Joe McCoy was
living in Wichita. He was engaged to lay out the stock
yards and superintend the building. The sum of $15,000
was voted for the purpose. He had the yards finished in
time__for the shipping season of '72. They had fifteen
subdivisions, twenty-seven gates, four runways and
chutes, the whole so conveniently arranged that they had
a capacity of one hundred twenty-five carloads a day.
The yards were located in the southeastern part of
Wichita. To reach them, cattle that were held on CowsMn
Creek and other tributaries of the Arkansas had to cross
the river and be driven through town.

The Arkansas was an unpredictable stream; it could be
crossed easily enough at times and was impassable, or
at least dangerous, at others. To profit by the problem,
a group of enterprising citizens raised $27,000 in '72 for
the building of a toll bridge extending from the western
end of Douglas Avenue across the river to the tough
district that was called Delano.

This wooden bridge was completed and in operation
by midseason. It was the first cattle toll bridge in Kansas.
It paid for itself in a year and would have made its
promoters rich if the "Northenders," a group of aroused
citizens led by J. C. Fraker, had not banded together and
forced the town to build a free bridge, near the junction
of the Arkansas and Little Arkansas rivers. That they
succeeded was due in no small part to the backing they
got from Marsh Murdock, the editor and publisher of the
Wichita Eagle. All through Ms lifetime Marsh Murdock
was to be the champion of justice and fair play. More than
three quarters of a century have elapsed between then
and now, but the Eagle is still one of the most important
voices in Kansas. It is Marsh Murdock 's monument.

180 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

No better evidence of how Wichita regarded the cattle
trade can be found than in the City Commission designa
tion of Douglas Avenue as the thoroughfare by which
herds coining off the bridge must be driven to the stock
yards. It meant the passing of twenty-five hundred head
a day, but no one minded the clouds of dust, the incessant
bellering, the accompanying profanity, or the knocking
down of a post or two supporting the wooden awnings
when a bunch of steers got out of hand; the prosperity
of Wichita was bound up in the Longhorns.

The most important center in town was where Main
Street crossed Douglas Avenue. Rupp's two-story Keno
House was located on the northwest corner of the inter
section. Across Main Street to the east on Douglas
Avenue was the New York Store, outfitting headquarters
for cowboys. It had the trade until irrepressible Jake
Karatofsky, who had followed the cattle trade from
Abilene to Ellsworth, arrived with a trainload of mer
chandise and expressed his confidence in the future of
Wichita by opening the finest establishment of its kind
west of Kansas City, replete with expensive plate-glass
show windows.

It was not until 73 that the Douglas Avenue Hotel,
two blocks west of the Keno House on Douglas, at the
corner of Water, opened its doors. Diagonally across
Douglas was the Texas House. It was in the Texas House
that Edward L. Doheny, the future oil tycoon, washed
dishes for a living.

The Douglas Avenue corner east of the Texas House,
at the time a patch of weeds, was known far and wide as
"Horsethief Corner. " Nothing has ever come to light to
substantiate the legend that the corner was so named
because a horse thief had once been hanged there. More
likely the name originated from the fact that it was a
popular place for selling horses at auction some of

WICHITA TAKES OVER 181

which may have been stolen. The Occidental Hotel, opened
in '74, was on Second Street, off Douglas and adjacent
to the office of the Wichita Beacon, the town's second
newspaper.

It may be gathered from the foregoing that Wichita
was a powerful loadstone, drawing unto itself an assort
ment of undesirables of every shade. During the four
years in which it reigned supreme as a cattle market,
there was scarcely a gambler or gunman of note who
couldn't be found in Wichita. It was bigger, noisier, and
more torrid than Abilene ever was. It was often on the
verge of exploding. That it didn't was due to a young,
brown-haired Irishman from County Cavan, by the name
of Mike Meagher. (The name was and still is pronounced,
"May-gar"' in Wichita and Caldwell.) With the excep
tion of 1874, he was city marshal from '71 to '75, at which
time a good half of the Texas cattle trade shifted to
Dodge City. It was Mike Meagher, not Wyatt Earp, who
tamed Wichita.

Mike's twin brother, John Meagher, served under him
as assistant marshal in 1871. In '72 and '73 John was
elected sheriff of Sedgwick County. Wichita was an or
ganized but not yet incorporated town when Mike
Meagher was appointed by Mayor Allen. After incor
poration, the City Commission had charge of the Police
Department. The city marshal was elected by popular
vote, the members of the force by vote of the City Com
mission.

What appears to have been a conflict of authority be
tween local peace officers and the U.S. Army occurred
when Captain Whee, Scouts Lee Stewart and Jack
Bridges (later a peace officer in Dodge), and a hundred
troopers of the 6th U.S. Cavalry rode into Wichita to
take into custody John Ledf ord, wanted for stealing army
mounts. Ledford had recently purchased a small hotel

182 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

and changed its name to the Harris Hotel, a compliment
to his bride of a few weeks whose family name was
Harris.

Captain Whee questioned her and was told that Ledf ord
was not at home. She invited him to search the house,
which he did, but without finding Ledf ord. As the troop
waited, Jack Bridges' attention was attracted to an out
house at the rear of DeMoose's Saloon, a few doors away.
A man stepped out of the saloon and made a number of
hurried trips to the outhouse. Bridges told Whee that he
believed Ledford was hiding in the privy.

The place was surrounded and Ledford was told to
come out. There was no answer for several minutes. Sud
denly, then, the door was flung open and Ledford popped
out, a pair of revolvers in his hands and began firing.
On Captain Whee's order the troopers opened up on the
man. He was struck a number of times but continued
shooting until his pistols were empty. A man opened the
rear door of the saloon and tossed him a six-gun. Ledford
started running for the street, shooting as he ran. In
credibly, he reached the street, crossed it, and sat down
on a barrel in front of Dagner's cigar store. As the
troopers ran up, he fell forward on his face dead. He had
stopped enough lead to kill half a dozen men.

It is unlikely that it was the first killing in Wichita, but
it was the first to be recorded. Shortly thereafter two
cowboys dueled to the death in the dance-house across the
river in Delano run by Rowdy Joe Lowe and his wife
Kate. Before the shipping season was over, a total of
four men were killed in Delano. The settlement, consist
ing of Eowdy Joe's establishment and another dance-hall
operated by Jack (Bed) Beard, which stood side by side,
several saloons and eating places, and the cribs of the
courtesans, was beyond the town limits and had no police
protection, nor wanted any.

WICHITA TAKES OVER 183

Rowdy Joe and Kate made too big a splash in cow-
town history to be ignored. Joe was a rough, tough squat
man with a bullet-shaped head. He had killed several
men, among them a Jim Sweet in Newton in the fall of
*71. When he was in his cups he was a wild man, as
unbearable to his friends as to his enemies. His wife Kate
was the only one who had control over him. She was a
small, handsome woman. Streeter says she had the reputa
tion of being "straight" This is echoed by Sutton who
knew her in Dodge City, where, as Eowdy Kate Lowe
[the name had some commercial value], she operated
one of the leading dance-halls.

But it was in Delano, across the river from Wichita,
that Kowdy Joe and Rowdy Kate won unenviable fame.
The receipts of their den of vice seldom fell below a
thousand dollars a week. Cowboys provided their prin
cipal source of revenue. But they were not alone. Visitors
from the East, seeking a thrill, patronized it. Certain
visiting clergymen and reformers were seen there on oc
casion, their avowed purpose being to see for themselves
to what depths of depravity the place, known as the
"swiftest joint in Kansas/ 7 had descended.

By comparison Red Beard, Rowdy Joe's competitor,
was an educated man and ordinarily well behaved. There
was an implacable hatred between them. Wherever Red
went, he carried a double-barrel shotgun and he carried
it for but one purpose. The long-anticipated moment for
using it did not come until late the following year. When
it did, it chanced that he had a pistol in his hand, not
the shotgun.

Wichita had an ordinance prohibiting the carrying
of deadly weapons within the town limits. Signboards
posted at the four principal entrances of the town bore
this pertinent inscription :

184 WELD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

Everything goes in Wichita. Leave your revol
vers at police headquarters, and get a check.
Carrying concealed weapons strictly forbidden.

The number of fines levied for violations of the ordi
nance indicate that a serious attempt was made to enforce
it. If Mike Meagher and his brother did not bear down
harder, it can be charged to the fact that the city fathers
were definitely inclined to be tolerant of the behavior of
the Texans. The town was booming, money was flowing
in. If it could be kept that way, and the shooting and
killing held within bounds, they asked for nothing more.
It was a dangerous policy to pursue and it was to come
back to plague them.

Wichita was growing. For two blocks, coming east from
Water Street, there were few vacant lots left on Douglas
Avenue. A license was granted a man named Saunders
to open a variety theater. Though it was September
already and the season drawing to a close, work on the
building was begun at once. The newspapers hailed it as
further proof of the town's permanence and predicted
that in a year or two Wichita would have a population
of five thousand. This was typical Kansas newspaper
optimism, and as a cow town the figure was never realized.
Wichita was to grow, but few people then alive were to see
it become the thriving city it is today.

On the last Sunday in September there was another
fatal blast of gunfire in Delano. Charlie Jennison, a
small-time gambler who hung out in Red Beard's dance-
house, had an argument over cards with Jackson Davis,
a young black-haired Virginian. Davis had come up the
trail with a herd that was being held on Clearwater
Creek. Jennison came around the corner of Beard's
place and found Davis waiting for Trim- Davis fired first,
the bullet striking Jennison in the neck. Jennison was

WICHITA TAKES OVER 185

slower on the draw but his shooting was more accurate.
His shot struck Davis in the body, inflicting a mortal
wound. The latter fired a second time as he went down,
the slug catching Jennison in the right arm. The gambler
ran around in back of Beard's place and disappeared.
Davis lived only a few minutes.

It was the last killing of the year in Delano. In two
weeks the season was over. In contrast to what had oc
curred in Abilene and the other cow towns, no general
exodus of the undesirables followed. And with good rea
son. For the past month the price of cattle had dropped.
The owners of the hundred fifty thousand head of Long-
horns being held in the cow camps near Wichita de
cided to hold them over till spring, hoping for higher
prices. It meant that hundreds of cowboys would be
spending their wages in Kansas that winter.

In Wichita proper there was a marked curtailment of
the past summer's activity. Most of the cattle buyers and
traders left. In their place came speculators who were
interested in buying and selling land, rather than cattle.
They got a cool reception, but they were there to stay.
There was no finer farm land in Kansas than was to be
found in Sedgwick County. The advertisements they
placed in newspapers reaching farm communities in the
Midwest began to bear fruit by spring, and prospective
farmers with foreign-sounding names began to mingle
with the Texans along Douglas Avenue.

Anticipating that '73 would be a banner year for
Wichita, the City Commission raised the license fees on
saloons, gambling establishments, and bordellos. Of the
latter there were at least ten. Most of them were located
on Water Street.

In common with every Kansas town in the cattle era,
Wichita had a madame named Dixie Lee. Her establish
ment was the most elegant in town and reaped a harvest.

186 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

Though still a rather young woman, she died suddenly in
1875, leaving an estate valued at $200,000. A long search
ensued for her heirs. The lawyers ultimately located her
father, a Methodist minister in a small southern Missouri
town. He was shocked when he learned the nature of the
profession his daughter had followed. But he accepted
the windfall Douglas Avenue snickered. Whitey Bupp's
caustic, but not particularly original, observation that
it only went to show that the wages of sin were a damned
sight better than the wages of virtue, had a wide cir
culation.

It was a confident Wichita that looked forward to
1873. It had captured the Texas cattle trade and saw no
rival that could seriously contest with her for its con
tinued domination. Caldwell as yet amounted to nothing;
Dodge City was a buffalo hunters' town, shipping hides
and robes. Great Bend, ninety miles west of Newton, on
the main line of the Santa Fe, had for some time been a
market for stock cattle, but not of the first rank. It lay
in the rich Arkansas Valley, the surrounding prairies
carpeted with excellent grass, and living water could be
found most anywhere. But it was so far north at least
fifty miles that Wichita scoffed at the idea of the Texas
herds shifting to Great Bend. The little settlement up
the Arkansas meant to have a try at it nevertheless. It
brought Joe McCoy up from Wichita and hired Trim to
build a new stockyard and trumpet the possibilities of
Great Bend as a major cattle market.

McCoy was soon engaged in a vigorous propaganda
campaign. Though he was no longer an important figure,
he was still the father of the Texas cattle trade and what
he had to say was received with a certain amount of re
spect. That a man as experienced as he could have really
believed that the big herds could be attracted to Great
Bend seems doubtful.

WICHITA TAKES OVEB 187

" Every needed accommodation exists in the way of
banking institutions, hotel, and large business houses to
accommodate an immense cattle trade, " he wrote. "The
railroad is equipped with superior rolling stock, motive
power, and all needful facilities to transport more than
one hundred thousand head of cattle annually." 1

And again: "This point [Great Bend] is destined,
at no distant date, to be recognized as the chief shipping
point on A.T. and S. Fe R,R. Herds stopping in the
vicinity of Great Bend have the advantage of the market
and competition of the K.P. Railway, which is distant
only about forty miles. This fact alone will secure it a
good business. The adjacent country is such that it will
remain unsettled for years to come. Parties seeking to
purchase Texan Cattle for market, feeding, or ranching
purposes, find Great Bend a point so located that from
it all southern and western cattle stopping near Wichita,
or near the A.T. and S. Fe R.R., as well as those stopping
on the line of the K.P. Railway, can be seen without
great difficulty. Thus purchasers have an opportunity to
make selections of stock and find good bargains, not
equalled by any other cattle point in the State of Kansas.
The shipping facilities are all that the most fastidious, or
the largest operators could desire, and the citizens are
unanimous in the determination to promote and facilitate
a large cattle trade/ 72

Undoubtedly it was to his interest to beat the drum
for Great Bend. But the rosy pictures he painted of it as
the greatest of all cattle markets were never realized.
It was never to be a major cow town. He could hardly
have been more mistaken than in saying that "the
adjacent country is such that it will remain unsettled
for years to come. ' '

But solid prosperity was in store for Great Bend, and
it was to come from wheat, not from Longhorn cattle.

CHAPTER iVJLLL

LONGHOKN CARNIVAL

80DGrE CITY had a succession of
marshals, some lasting only a few
days or weeks. Caldwell fared even
worse in its days as an important market for Texas
cattle. In fact, it never found one who could control the
town. Until it found Charlie Brown, Ellsworth did little
better. Only Abilene, with Tom Smith and Hickok, had
a better record. It makes it all the more remarkable that
Wichita, second only to Dodge in the length of its pre
eminence as a cow town, discovered in Mike Meagher,
its first city marshal, a peace officer who was equal
to the job, and whose tenure of office four years in all
set a record that never came close to being matched by
any other wearer of the silver star.

Mike was twenty-seven when he became chief of police.
He was only a medium-sized man and never won any
reputation as a fast gun and expert with the six-shooter.
That he lasted so long must be attributed to the fact that
he had the grudging respect of the troublemakers among
the Texans and the lawless element that infested Wichita.
He was a mild-tempered man, never officious, and they
say that even when he found it necessary to make an ar
rest there was usually a twinkle in his brown eyes. Some

188

LONGHOKSr CARNIVAL 189

men were deceived by his easygoing manner and thought
they could run over him. They quickly learned just how
far they could go with Meagher.

In his days as Wichita's top police officer he is reputed
to have killed five men. That the figure wasn't higher
shows some remarkable restraint on his part, for he
was riding herd on a town that was as wild as the wildest.
Legend has it that one of the five was a cousin of a Texas
desperado by the name of Jim Talbot, and that it was
to avenge the killing of his cousin that brought Talbot
to Caldwell a few years later for a showdown with
Meagher.

In the spring of 73 cattle prices were substantially
higher. Cattle that had been held over began to flow into
the Wichita stockyards long before new herds from the
south reached the market. It was an auspicious beginning.

A city election was held on April 16. Jim Hope, a
partner in the firm of Hope and Eichards, wholesale
dealers in wines, liquors, and tobacco on North Main
Street, was elected mayor. Mike Meagher was re-elected
city marshal. His brother John was re-elected sheriff of
Sedgwick County. Dan Parks, who had served out John's
term as deputy city marshal, was reappointed. Arrange
ments were made to hire special policemen if occasion
demanded. It is interesting to note that Meagher 's salary
was $91.65 per month; Parks was paid $75 per month.
Policemen, if needed, were to be paid $60 on a month-to-
month basis. 1

A representative of a carbon works in St. Louis had
been driving about the country, interviewing farmers,
who as yet had no crops for sale. Presently Wichita was
treated to the sight of farm wagons hauling into town
great loads of cattle and buffalo bones, which were piled
up beside the railroad tracks until there were three or
four carloads of them. Gathering bones continued to be

190 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

a means of eking out a living for a dozen years.

The area in downtown Wichita in which violence could
be expected to occur was a constricted one, most of the
principal brothels being no more than an average city
block in all four directions from the intersection of
Douglas Avenue and Main Street. Located in the district
was the municipal building in which were housed the
town lockup, the police court, the mayor's office, and
police headquarters. A big steel triangle hung suspended
in front of the building. When struck, the alarm could be
heard all over town. It usually found either Meagher or
the deputy marshal near at hand. As a result, one or
both were enabled to reach the scene of a disturbance
in time to nip it in the bud. But not always. Arrests
were frequent, and police-court records show that the
amount collected in fines for disturbing the peace and
assault totaled more than $5600 in '73.

Billy Collins' saloon on North Main Street was a
constant source of trouble. It was a Texan stronghold.
Meagher and Deputy Parks were confronted with a situ
ation there, early in May, that only Mike's tact and good
sense kept from developing into an ugly explosion.

Shanghai Pierce, in his new role of cattle trader, was
in Wichita. He brought to his drinking the same en
thusiasm he did to everything else in which he engaged.
By midafternoon he was drunk and belligerent. Collins
couldn't do anything with him. When Shang was in
that mood, few men had the temerity to try to reason
with him. Though a Connecticut Yankee by birth, he had
been in Texas so long and was so thoroughly Texan that
the Lone Star men idolized him. When he was in his
cups, he believed he was what they said he was the
biggest man who had ever come up the Chisholm Trail
and that the laws other men had to live by didn't apply
to him.

CAEOTVAL 191

Deputy Marshal Parks was on Main Street, walking
toward Collins' saloon when a burst of shooting rang out
on the afternoon air. A big man was sprawled over the
bench in front of the saloon and firing at the ornamental
roof of the building across the way. Parks ran up near
enough to recognize the offender. When he did, he turned
and ran back to sound the alarm. It brought Meagher on
the run. When the latter heard Park's story, he decided
they had better speak to the mayor before they did any
thing.

All three men realized that they had a bear by the
tail now. To arrest Shang Pierce would surely precipitate
a riot. On the other hand, it was just as certain that to
ignore such a wanton violation of the "no gun" ordinance
by a character as prominent as Shanghai Pierce would
be an invitation to every cowboy with a drink or two in
him to do likewise.

Relations between Pierce and Meagher had always
been very friendly. Mike said he would go down and
talk to Shang and first try to get him off the street, then
talk him into handing over his gun.

Those who were watching saw him sit down with
Shang. No one knew what was said, but the two men were
soon laughing about something. Mike got up and helped
the big man to his feet Shang Pierce weighed a good
two hundred and thirty pounds and led him inside.
They sat down at a table and began drinking together.
Nothing was said about making an arrest.

Mike said afterward that he figured if he could get a
few more drinks into the big fellow that Shang would be
so helpless he could be managed. The stratagem worked.
With Collins ' help the marshal got Shang out the back
way and, to save face for him, led him up the alley and
put him to bed in the Texas House.

In the morning Meagher was on hand with a check

192 WIU), WOOLLY AND WICKED

for Shang's gun, which reposed on the rack at police
headquarters. The latter had had his fun and was not
even mildly indignant. To prove it, Mike and he repaired
to the bar for an eye-opener.

Wyatt Earp takes this incident, moves it ahead a year
to some time after he became a policeman in Wichita,
serving under Marshal Bill Smith, and makes himself
the hero of it, and claims that the way he manhandled
Shang Pierce led to an attempt by Manning Clements
(he calls him Mannen Clements) and half a hundred
Texans to take over the town something that occurred
only in Earp's imagination.

The first recorded killing in 73 took place in Red
Beard's dance-hall on June 2. The 6th U.S. Cavalry was
encamped south of Wichita. A score of troopers, taking
advantage of a twelve-hour pass, came up to Delano.
One of them got into an argument with a cowpuncher
over a girl. A quarrel followed, ending in a gun fight.
The girls and non-combatants stampeded in a rush to
escape the flying lead. A girl was shot. Before the battle
was over, a trooper was killed and two others wounded.
Half a dozen men were killed in Delano that season,
and twice that number were shot or stabbed but survived.
The Keno House and other leading gambling resorts
operated around the clock. In them a player got a fair
run for his money, but they were outnumbered four to
one by the places in which the games were rigged. Crooks
and tinhorn gamblers fleeced or robbed countless victims.
Many of them were farmers who had arrived in Wichita
to invest their savings in land. The police were swamped
with complaints. It was difficult to get convictions against
the sharpers. Some licenses were canceled. That was
about as far as retribution went. If any undesirable
characters were ever ordered to leave Wichita forthwith,

LOKGHOEN CABSTIVAL, 193

no mention of it occurs in the columns of the Eagle and
the Beacon in 1873.

Accounts of the fortunes being made by land agents
in Wichita appeared in newspapers east of the Missis
sippi and brought a number of gullible young men to
town, eager to get rich quick. Among them was Jim
Hemenway, from Indiana. Wyatt mentions him; calls
him Hemmingway and has him hauling in buffalo bones
for a living* If so, young Hemenway was doing a man's
work at an early age ; he was born at Boonville, in War-
rick County, in 1860, which would have made him all of
fifteen at the time. He was back in Indiana a few years
later and eventually got himself elected to the United
States Senate.

As the summer wore along, reports reached Wichita
of increasing friction between the trail drivers and the
farmers who had bought land north of Wellington, the
county seat of Sunnier County, which lay between
Sedgwick County and the border, and were fencing them
selves in. Within several miles of the hamlet of Sumner
City wire had been strung across the trail. It had been
cut several times, only to be repaired and restretched.
In July a trail boss coining up with a big herd was warned
as he passed Wellington that he would run into trouble
if he tried to drive through the fence at Simmer City.
Ignoring the warning, he drove on. When he reached the
fence he found a number of farmers, armed with shot
guns, awaiting him. If there was no shooting, it was only
because, after a long and bitter exchange, the herd turned
west and went around the fence.

It was a repetition of the old, old story. The cattleman
did the huffing and puffing and fought aggressively for
his rights, real or fancied. When he tangled with the
farmer, he gave him a bad time of it but in the end, it

194 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

was the man with the hoe, not the man in the saddle, who
carried the day.

As yet the trouble down in Simmer County was no
larger than a man's hand, and booming Wichita refused
to regard it as a serious threat to its continuing pros
perity. New buildings were going up every day. Work on
the imposing brick and stone three-story Occidental
Hotel, on Second Street, was being rushed. When it was
finished, McCoy called it "an edifice that would do
credit to rebuilt Chicago." 2 Saunders' Variety Theater
was doing a capacity business. The enthusiasm of its
nightly audiences often ended in a disturbance that called
for police intervention. The entertainment it purveyed
consisted of scantily clad females, lewd comedians, and
the virtuous ballad singer rendering the familiar tear-
jerkers about home and mother.

Over on North Main Street a side-show freak who
advertised himself as "Professor Gessler, the Armless
Wonder/ 7 gave daily and nightly exhibitions and sold
photographs of himself. Nearby, Little Billy, "The Boy
Wonder" (suspected of being a midget in disguise), and
an assortment of horrors, including a two-headed baby/
born dead, could be seen for the small admission price of
twenty-five cents.

Wichita was very gay. Then on September 20 the New
York Stock Exchange closed its door and banks across
the country failed. It took the widening reverberations
a few days to affect Wichita. Suddenly it was engulfed;
cattle prices plunged downward and the market collapsed.
Steers that had been sent to the stockyards were driven
back across the river and turned out on the CowsMn and
other creeks.

But herds that were being driven up the trail con
tinued to arrive. By October it was obvious that for the

L02TGHOBN CABKIVAL 195

second year in a row thousands of Longhorns would
be put on grass and wintered in Sedgwick County.

Wichita quickly recovered its ebullient spirit. The
Eagle asserted that no one had lost money by holding his
cattle in the county in the winter of '72- '73 and there was
no reason to believe that the winter of '73^*74 would not
be as favorable.

As October advanced, the days still warm at noon,
a pleasant autumnal haze in the sky, and the trees that
choked the creek bottoms bedecked in their gaudiest
raiment, the scene was so peaceful it seemed to hold some
hope that 1873 would pass into history without another
outbreak of violence. It proved to be only wishful think
ing. On the night of October 27 the most talked-about
gun fight of the year occurred. Both principals were well
known. So was their hatred for each other. "When they
met head-on and settled their differences in a blaze of
gunfire, no one had any reason to be surprised.

Bed Beard was in his dance-house, indulging in a
drunken frolic with a group of his Delano friends, when
it occurred to him that it would be a good idea to step
next door and break up the festivities in progress in
Kowdy Joe Lowe's place. For some inexplicable reason
Red disdained the shotgun he had carried for months
and led the way armed only with a pistol.

The fiddlers were sawing away and a dozen couples
were dancing when Bed and his friends burst in. Whether
by accident or design he fired into the crowd. The bullet
struck one of Rowdy Joe's girls and she ran screaming
to the rear of the building. The musicians scattered,
and so did the other girls. Rowdy Joe and half a dozen
of his stalwarts rushed up to do battle. In a moment the
shooting became general, revolvers and shotguns being
brought into play.

Early in the fray a bullet struck Rowdy Joe in the

196 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

back of the neck. The wound was not serious enough to
put him out of the fight. Bill Anderson, a well-known
Delano character, was shot in the head, the slug passing
through just in back of his eyes and killing him instantly.
In the summer of 73 Anderson had been arrested in
Wichita, charged with shooting a man in a livery barn,
and had subsequently been acquitted.

Bed was the next man to go down, receiving a load of
buckshot in the right arm and hip. Several others were
wounded. When the smoke cleared away, the wonder was
that so many had escaped being struck.

Eowdy Joe crossed the bridge and surrendered him
self to the sheriff. His bail was set at $2000 and he was
freed. Though Eed Beard died as a result of his wounds
several days later, Joe Lowe was never prosecuted. He
and Kate continued to operate the dance-hall until Delano
faded.

In several accounts of the battle in Eowdy Joe's place
that are in print, one reads "the ball passed just in back
of his eyes" in describing Anderson's wound. If this is
meant to convey the impression that the old-fashioned
cap-and-ball pistol was used, it is undoubtedly an error.
The famous Single Action Model 1873 Army Colt was
just coming into circulation, but by the tens of thousands
the old 1860 Army Colt had been converted to use metallic
cartridges. The cap-and-ball pistol was as outmoded as
the beaver hat. Any man who prided himself on the gun
he wore carried a converted 1860 Army Colt. It was a
good revolver and the real daddy of the great Peace
maker. 8

Among the newcomers to Wichita was a young lawyer.
He was a native of Kentucky, a graduate of Kentucky
University, Bethany College, in West Virginia, and had
studied law at Cincinnati Law College. Though his qualifi
cations were excellent, he had come to Wichita at a bad

LOKGHOKST CAB28TIVAL 197

time. He "hung out his shingle, 5 ' as the old saying had
it, but he found clients hard to come by. When his law
practice failed to produce even a scanty living, he did
odd jobs, giving the town a preview of the determination
and fighting spirit that were to make him famous.

Unfortunately Wichita did not recognize his talents.
He continued in such dire circumstances that, when a
minor legal opening in Missouri was offered him a year
later, it took him weeks to put together money enough
for his railroad fare. His name was James Beauchamp
Clark.

Adversity had sharpened his wits. That was Wichita's
only claim on him. His voice began to be heard in the land.
When Missouri voters sent the young orator to Wash
ington and the House of Representatives, he became a
fixture, winning fame by besting "Uncle Joe" Cannon,
ending "Cannonism," and being elected Speaker.

At the Democratic National Convention in Baltimore,
in 1912, with 440% votes, he was the party's leading
candidate for the office of president of the United States
only to lose when William Jennings Bryan deserted
him for Woodrow Wilson.

Early in life he had dropped the James Beauchamp.
Wichita knew him as plain Champ Clarke a name that
will be forever prominent in American political history.

CHAPTER

THE ROUGHS ARE ROTJTED

8ARLY IN 1874 fifteen hundred Men-
nonites arrived in Kansas and bought
100,000 acres of land in Harvey,
Keno, Marion, and McPherson counties. Wichita was
more interested in the Longhorns that were being brought
across the river every day and driven to the shipping
pens. The country had recovered from the panic. The
market was on the upswing again and sales, were readily
made at satisfactory prices. The first herds of the year
had not yet crossed the Kansas line when reports reach
ing Wichita indicated that the number of Longhorns to
arrive in Sedgwick County that year would top the record
set in '73.

The total figure reached in the next five months can
only be estimated. It could have been as high as half a
million. It could not have been much less. There is no
doubt that '74 was a much bigger season than '72. In that
year a count was kept of the herds passing through
Caldwell on their way north. In a letter written by
Wayne Grard, the well-known historian, and printed in
the* Border Queen Edition of the Caldwell Messenger,
in April 1956, the following occurs: "In 1872 someone at
Caldwell listed 292 Texas herds, with the names of the

198

THE ROUGHS ARJE ROUTED 199

owners or drovers, which came through that town be
tween May 1st. and November 1st. of that year. This list
appears in the Texas Almanac for 1873, pages 30-32."

The usual size of a trail herd was nearer fifteen hun
dred head than a thousand. Striking an average at
twelve hundred head, 350,000 Longhorns reached Kansas
that year. Wichita received only part of them; in '74 it
got them all. It seems within the bounds of reason to
say that in the latter year there was an over-all increase
of 15 to 20 per cent in the number of Longhorns coming
north, which would bring the figure up to 400,000 or
better.

In the spring election Jim Hope succeeded himself
as mayor. Mike Meagher was defeated and William Smith
became city marshal. It was not a change for the better.
Dan Parks, who had served under Meagher, was reap-
pointed assistant marshal. William Dibb and Jim Cairns
were employed as policemen. A month later, at Smith's
request, John Behrens and J. F. Hooker were added to
the force. P. H. Massey was elected sheriff of Sedgwick"
County.

It was quickly apparent that Bill Smith was not an
other Mike Meagher. The tough element became bolder,
violence increased, and Hurricane Bill Martin and his
cronies, known as the Texas Gang, defied him almost
openly. Wyatt Earp was hired as a policeman on June
17 and continued in that capacity for the rest of that
year and 1875. He was never city marshal or assistant
marshal. He says: "Bill Smith was responsible to a
certain group for what law enforcement was attempted
. . . repeated urging failed to elicit from Marshal Smith
any whole-hearted threat against gun-toters in the
Wichita streets." 1

This was a continuance of the policy of doing nothing
to offend the barons of the rich cattle trade and their

200 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

hired hands. With Meagher out of the way and a pliable
man put in his place, it could be carried out. That Jim
Hope, the mayor, was under pressure from the men
who had elected him to run Wichita their way is hardly
deniable. Of course he was vulnerable; he had a pros
perous wholesale wine and liquor business and they were
his most important customers.

An incident occurred on the night of May 25 that
brought matters to a head between the roughs and the
police. A cowboy named Eamsey picked a quarrel with
Charley Saunders, a giant Negro hod carrier, then em
ployed on the Miller Building, which was being erected
on North Main Street. Saunders, forgetting that he was
a "Nigger" (in 1874 the Texans had no other word for
a colored man) and as such was supposed to submit to
abuse without striking back, knocked Ramsey down.
Policeman Cairns had run up. To head off further trouble,
he arrested both men and brought them before Police
Judge Jewett As evidence of the leeway being given
the Texans, Jewett lectured the two men and dismissed
the charge.

If Charley Saunders had been a white man, the in
cident would very likely have ended there. But to be
hauled before the judge for tangling with a "Nigger"
rankled not only him but his friends. On the afternoon
of the twenty-seventh Saunders was climbing a ladder
with a hod of bricks when Eamsey appeared on the
street below and shot him, the first bullet striking him
in the ear, the second piercing his lungs. As the Negro
came crashing down in a shower of bricks, the so-called
Texas Gang, a dozen strong, ran out from a saloon
across Main Street and drew their pistols.

City Marshal Bill Smith, reached the scene at the
same moment. He did not call on the gang to drop their
revolvers. By his own admission he did nothing. "I was

THE BOUGHS ABE BOUTED '

powerless, " he said later. " Facing all those drawn
guns, there was nothing I could do. ' '

Ramsey quickly mounted a horse and raced down
Main Street and out Douglas Avenue and across the
bridge. A score of citizens, angered by the gang's open
defiance of the law and the impotence of the police,
seized weapons and ran after the fleeing man, discharg
ing their revolvers and shotguns, which tended to re
lieve their feelings but otherwise accomplished nothing.

Though Ramsey was soon safely on his way to Texas,
he left an aroused Wichita behind him. A Vigilance
Committee, a citizen police consisting of a hundred men
recruited from the town's most substantial citizens, was
organized, sworn in, and armed. The Eagle added its
voice to the unrest, demanding that the ordinance against
carrying deadly weapons be enforced.

The mayor and his cohorts, in an attempt to save face,
responded to the situation by a mild shake-up of the
police. Sam Burris, a special policeman, was taken on in
a full-time capacity, and Sam Botts was added to the
force. As has been noted, on June 17 Wyatt Earp was
appointed a policeman. Wichita's official law enforce
ment organization now consisted of City Marshal Bill
Smith, Deputy Marshal Dan Parks, and Officers Dibb,
Cairns, Behrens, Hooker, Burris, Botts, and Earp. As
soon as the crisis was deemed to have passed, the force
was reduced, Cairns, Behrens, Botts, and Earp re
maining.

Wyatt Earp's biographer refers to him continually
as the deputy marshal of Wichita. This is a contradiction
of the records. In fact, a study of them reveals that he
was always close to being the low man on the police
totem pole. Behrens and he were detailed to collect
license money from the saloons, gambling joints, and
brothels. He states that the salary paid him was $125

202 WILD, WOOLLY ASTD WICKED

per month, with the city supplying arms and ammunition.
The record says he was paid $60 a month.

Speaking of Wichita peace officers, Earp says : " Early
in its history, professional killers had been hired to en
force some semblance of order, men deadly skillful with
weapons, but who took the law as a license to shoot
potential troublemakers without warning. Wild Bill
Hickok had been the outstanding exponent of this
school. He and his kind had rid the town of several un
desirable visitors. From the Hickok regime the camp
swung to the extreme of peace officers who were eternally
compromising with the gun-toters." He is quoted
further as saying: "In two years at Wichita my deputies
[sic] and I arrested more than eight hundred men. In all
that time I had to shoot but one man and that only to
disarm him. All he- got was a flesh wound." 2

This is largely nonsense. Earp had no deputies. He is
also badly mistaken in claiming that Hickok was ever a
Wichita peace officer. Hickok visited the camp, but he
never saw service there as a lawman. Earp includes Jim
Hope in his error. "At the end of the shipping season
Mayor Hope pointed out with pride that eighty arrests
had been made, without a shot being fired, the violators
of the law found guilty and fined. 'Earp has proved that
the town can be made to knuckle under without the use
of a gun,' the Mayor crowed. * That's more than Hickok
could do.'" 3

Hickok had been dead for a half a century when these
statements were made. That was true of all the men
Earp claimed to have bested, both Thompsons, Manning
Clements, Peshaur, Good, Neil Cain (spelled Kane by
Earp) Brown Bowen, Kobert M. Wright, "the first
citizen of Dodge," and a dozen others. Indeed, death
seems to have been the prerequisite required to oil the
wheels of his imagination.

THE ROUGHS ABE BOUTED 203

Marshal Bill Smith entertained a low regard for Earp
and the latter returned the feeling with interest. Of that
there can be no doubt. It culminated in a battle in May of
'76 that supplied the real reason for Earp's departure
from Wichita not that much-quoted mythical tele
gram "You have cleaned up Wichita. Come over and
clean up Dodge. "

It is strange that in his account of the violence in
Wichita in '74 and '75 Wyatt never once mentions Hurri
cane Bill Martin. Hurricane Bill was the recognized top
bad man of the town. In his place Earp created a bogey
man of his own out of Manning Clements, a gun slinger
and fire-eater in his own right, and who needed no em
bellishment. Of all the Wes Hardin clan, of whom there
were at least forty, he took second place to none except
Wes himself. But he had no reason to go gunning for
Earp, nor had his brothers Gip, Jim, and Joe. The same
could be said for their cousin Simp Dixon. Wyatt had
to have a reason for what he calls their sworn resolve
to run him out of Wichita, so he invented one*

Though long ago convinced that the alleged Earp-
Manning Clements clash was an invention, the present
writer wondered why Earp had selected Clements for
his target, when he could just as easily have aimed at
someone else Ben Thompson, for instance. Ben was in
Wichita, and his reputation as a gunman was greater
than Clements'. Wyatt may have felt that his version
of the affair in Ellsworth had so completely demolished
Ben as an opponent that he couldn't use him a second
time. However that may be, an incident was related to
the author, late in June 1959, that supplied a possible
clue to the riddle. But more about that later.

It was suppertime on July 6 when Officer Botts at
tempted to disarm a man as he emerged from Pryor's
Saloon, next door to the Keno House, where Jim Earp,

204 WILD, WOOLLY A2TO WICKED

Wyatt's elder brother, was employed as a bartender.
Bessie Earp, Jim's wife, was operating a bordello on
Water Street, and so profitably that she remained in
Wichita long after Wyatt and Jim went to Dodge. In
the Kansas State Census of 1875, she gives her occupation
as "sporting/'

The man Officer Botts had accosted refused to hand
over his pistol. The incident was undoubtedly arranged
to embarrass the police, for the next Botts knew, Hurri
cane Bill Martin and ten or twelve of his gang emerged
onto the sidewalk with sis-guns drawn. Botts said no
more and walked rapidly away. The alarm was sounded.
In a minute or two, no less than half a hundred vigilantes,
armed with shotguns and Henry rifles joined the marshal
and the other officers who had gathered in front of po
lice headquarters. Hurricane Bill and his men had walked
west on Douglas Avenue and were gathered at Horse-
thief Corner.

Sim Tucker, the lawyer, was sitting in his office talk
ing with Judge William P. Campbell, of the District
Court, when the alarm sounded. He kept a rifle and shot
gun in the office, ready for immediate action. He was
one of the organizers of the vigilantes and an outspoken
critic of Marshal Smith and the police force. Seizing the
shotgun, he ran out into the street with Judge Campbell
a step behind him armed with the rifle.

There is every reason to believe that Smith realized
he had to avoid an open clash with the Texas Gang if
possible. He had dodged several somewhat similar situ
ations in the past, when a showdown might well have
ended Hurricane Bill's domination of the town. Martin
was a known horse thief and suspected of numerous
robberies. His outlaw career extended back to 1868, in
the course of which he was reputed to have slain half
a dozen men, one of his crimes the brutal slaying of a

THE ROUGHS ABE BOUTED 205

homesteader on Walnut Kiver, in Butler County. Smith
spoke to Tucker and tried to get him to order the
vigilantes to disperse, saying that this was a matter the
police could handle.

The lawyer refused to listen. Leading the way, the
vigilantes marched up Douglas Avenue, with the police
tagging along, and took a stand on the south side of the
avenue opposite Hurricane Bill and his men. As Streeter
puts it, "This array of men and guns looked like two
armies facing each other. " 4

Smith was still protesting that this warlike gathering
was a mistake, that if a shot were fired it would be fol
lowed by a blast of promiscuous shooting that would
snuff out the lives of a score of innocent citizens.

Tucker expressed his contempt for the marshal and
the police. He is reported to have said : "This is the third
time we've been called out like this, without an arrest
being made. We're not afraid of trouble; we're used to
it. Tou walk over there and arrest Hurricane Bill or we
will."

The feeling against Smith had been growing for weeks.
This was the first time his hand had been called. Jimmy
Cairns, the best man on the force, did not come to his
rescue, nor did the others, including Policeman Earp.

Beside himself, the city marshal said, "All right,
Tucker, you arrest him, ' '

Silence descended, so deep that when Sim Tucker cocked
one barrel of his shotgun the sound of the hammer com
ing back could be heard across Douglas Avenue. Stepping
out into the dusty street, he leveled the weapon. "Bill,
you are under arrest/' he called out.

The outlaw's revolvers began an upward swing.

"Drop those guns," Tucker commanded without
raising his voice.

After an anxious moment's hesitation Hurricane Bill

206 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

said, with a half -smile : "You can take me. " Saying which,
he tossed his revolvers into the street.

Stunned by his action, his followers dropped their
six-guns or tossed them into the weeds. Without the help
of the officers Hurricane Bill and his crowd were marched
over to the police court, where Judge Jewett assessed fines
totaling six hundred dollars.

This episode ended the reign of the Texas Gang.
Fearful of the demonstrated power of the vigilantes,
Hurricane Bill drifted out of Wichita and most of his
followers went with him. It also marked the town's loss
of confidence and respect for City Marshal Smith. He
was not dismissed, hut even his staunchest supporters
realized that he was finished politically and could not
be re-elected.

- There is another aspect of this incident that is worthy
of examination. It lies in its amazing similarity to Wyatt
Earp's account of what occurred in Ellsworth in '73.
Substitute Ben Thompson for Hurricane Bill -both noted
gunmen inexplicably throwing their guns away and
Ellsworth for Wichita, with Earp playing the part of
Sim Tucker, and the two incidents are alike in every de
tail. There is one difference : the Wichita episode is fact,
not fancy.

Following the humbling of the Texas Gang, Wichita
became almost quietly law-abiding for three weeks. In
a belated attempt to regain some of his lost prestige,
City Marshal Smith quietly notified sixteen men who
had no visible means of support (principally petty
crooks and hangers-on in the gambling joints) to leave
town at once. Ffteen of them heeded the warning. One,
Tom MeG-rath, a little red-whiskered fighting cock, re
fused to leave and was brought before the mayor. To
him the little Irishman protested that he could not stand
the disgrace of being run out of town.

THE HOUGHS ARE EOUTED 207

Hope had him inarched over to Judge Jewett, who
found him guilty of vagrancy. Unable to pay his fine,
McG-rath was put to work on the streets under the
surveillance of a policeman, who made the mistake of
bearing down too hard on his prisoner. Being unarmed
and at a considerable disadvantage, nevertheless the little
red-whiskered man was not one to be put upon in that
fashion without becoming angrily vocal about it.

The officer threatened to put a ball and chain on
McG-rath. The threat so enraged the prisoner that the
two of them were engaged in a violent argument as they
neared the Beacon office on Second Street. It attracted a
crowd and it saw the officer strike McGrath. A fist-fight
ensued; in the course of it the prisoner seized one of
the officer's pistols. "The officer turned white and ran
toward the rear of the Beacon office yelling: "Hold on!
Hold on ! Don't shoot !" This is a quote from the Beacon.

McG-rath fired one shot as he pursued the policeman
around the building, down the alley, and back to Second
Street, where the policeman fired a shot that went wild.
McGrath caught up with him and tried to wrestle his
remaining pistol out of his hand.

A citizen came to the officer's assistance. The police
triangle had sounded an alarm. Officers Botts and Behrens
came on the run. They subdued McGrath and hustled him
off to jail, where he spent the rest of the summer.

This story has been told by three or four writers com
menting on the Wichita scene. The identity of the police
man involved is not disclosed. With Officers Botts and
Behrens accounted for it leaves only Jimmy Cairns and
Wyatt Earp. It had to be one or the other.

Both newspapers reported that the officer in question
handed in his commission to the mayor the following
morning, which was equivalent to resigning. No action
was taken, however, and the force remained as it was

208 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

before the fracas occurred. In an attempt to cover up tlie
bungling of his policeman, the mayor made it appear
that something more sinister was afoot by peremptorily
closing all gambling rooms. It was a blunder that de
ceived no one. Three days later the gambling houses were
open and doing business as usual.

Even with a weak city government and a rudderless
police department, violence and lawlessness showed a
marked decrease. The roughs had been routed and the
army of wild-eyed young Texans who thronged "Wichita's
streets had the threat of vigilante law to keep them in
line.

In August a calamity struck Kansas that Wichita
could not escape, even though its prosperity was still
largely bound up in Texas cattle. It was the invasion re
ferred to ever afterward by Kansans as "the grass
hoppers." It came on the heels of a partial drought.
There had been visitations of the pests in some sections
of the state in 1866 and again in 1867, but nothing to
compare with the hordes that filled the air and devoured
every particle of vegetation in 1874. In the longer-
established eastern counties, farmers were well enough
entrenched to weather the devastation; in central and
western Kansas, where farms were just coming into
production and no foodstuffs were stored, famine
threatened. Farms and homesteads were left deserted
by those who were able to leave. Those who remained
fought in vain to save something.

Governor Osborn appealed to the Federal Government
and the governors of Ohio, New York, and other Eastern
states for aid. It came in generous measure. Ten years
later Kansas was able to reciprocate by shipping ear-
loads of corn to flood victims in the Ohio River Valley.

Of the devastation Stuart Henry says: "I recall that
when coming home late one afternoon for supper I

THE BOUGHS ARE ROUTED 209

stepped back surprised to see what came to be known
as Bocky Mountain locusts covering the side of the house.
[This was in Abilene.] Already inside, they feasted on
the curtains. Clouds of them promptly settled down on
the whole country everywhere, unavoidable. People set
about killing them to save gardens, but this soon proved
ridiculous. Specially contrived machines, pushed oy
horses, scooped up the hoppers in grain fields by the
barrelful to burn them. This, too, was nonsensical. In a
week grain fields, gardens, trees, shrubs, vines had been
eaten down to the ground or bark. Nothing could be done.
You sat by and saw everything go." 5

In Wichita money was collected for the distressed. As
usual in such circumstances the saloon men and gamblers
were the most generous donors, as evidenced by the fol
lowing item in the Eagle : ' ' Mr. Whitey Hupp, the popular
proprietor of the Keno House, started the ball rolling
this morning with*a contribution of $250. " Down in Sum-
ner County cow outfits were reported to be setting the
grass afire to add to the farmers difficulties in the hope
of driving them out.

CHAPTER XX

WYATT EARP'S WICHITA

JITH understandable anxiety Kansas
waited to see if a cold winter had
destroyed the hordes of grass
hoppers, or if when spring opened up there would be
another visitation of the pests. In several widely sepa
rated districts they reappeared, but not in such numbers
that they could not be contained.

Though Wichita shared in the feeling of relief that
swept over the state, and prepared for another big year,
it was disquieting to learn that some herds coming north
had abandoned the Chisholm Trail and instead of cross
ing Red Biver at the established point had crossed at
Doan's Store, to the west, and after coming up through
the Nations were striking northwest through the present
Oklahoma Panhandle and would cross into Kansas about
where Bluff Creek flowed into the Cimarron, with Dodge
City their goal.

There are two Bluff Creeks in Kansas. One rises in
Harper County, flows through Sumner County and across
the line into Oklahoma to reach the Salt Pork of the
Arkansas. A hundred fifty miles to the west another Bluff
Creek has its beginning in Clark County, south of Dodge,
and empties into the Cimarron.

210

WYATT EARP'S WICHITA 211

The route these herds were taking was the Jones and
Phnnmer Trail. The hoofs of countless thousands of Long-
horns were to carve it deep in the prairies of Oklahoma
and Kansas.

The only reason for a trail driver taking the westward
route was to avoid the multiplying strands of barbed wire
that were blocking the old trail, and to escape the fines
that were being levied for trespassing under the provi
sions of the new Herd Law.

The distance from Bed River to Wichita was consider
ably shorter than from the Bed to Dodge. In the past the
number of miles to be covered had always been the con
trolling factor in the Texas cattle trade. Wichita was
convinced that it would hold good in the future; a few
herds might go to Dodge City, but the bulk of the trade
would continue to come to Wichita.

The spring election was at hand. Due to the weight of
the citizens who were identified with the vigilante move
ment, a new form of town government came into being,
with a City Commission charged with running the town.
Mike Meagher was elected city marshal for his fourth
term, defeating Bill Smith, but by an unexpectedly nar
row margin. Smith's surprising support came from the
saloonkeepers and hotel owners who wanted Wichita kept
a wide-open town as the best way of competing with
hell-roaring Dodge City. Cairns, JohnBehrens, and Wyatt
Earp were retained as policemen.

On May 12 the f oUowing item appeared in the Wichita
Beacon. It is the longest and most favorable article con
cerning Wyatt to appear in that newspaper. During all
the time that he served on the police force, the Beacon
mentions him only five times, and not always favorably.
The Wichita Eagle gives him only a couple of bnef men
tions. Neither newspaper published any long stories con
cerning his self -acclaimed outstanding police work.

212 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

On Tuesday evening of last week, policeman
Erp [sic], in his rounds ran across a chap whose
general appearance and get up answered to a
description given of one W. W. Compton, who
was said to have stolen two horses and a mule
from the vicinity of Le Eoy, in Coffey County.
Erp took him in tow, and inquired his name. He
gave it as "Jones." This didn't satisfy the offi
cer, who took Mr. Jones into the Gold Eoom,
on Douglas Avenue, in order that he might fully
examine him by lamplight. Mr. Jones not liking
the look of things, lit out, running to the rear of
Dennison's stables. Erp fired one shot across his
poop deck to bring him to, to use a naughty-cal
phrase, and just as he did so, the man cast anchor
near a clothes line, hauled down his colors and
surrendered without firing a gun. The officer laid
hold of him before he could recover his feet for
another run, and taking him to jail placed him in
the keeping of the sheriff. On the way " Jones "
acknowledged that he was the man wanted.

If so trifling a matter was worthy of the columns of the
Beacon, how can it be explained that it and its bitter
rival, the Eagle, had nothing to say about Earp's sup
posed disarming and arrest of the U.S. Army's contribu
tion to the gallery of badmen, Sergeant King? King was
a holy terror when crazed with whiskey. Even when sober
he was inclined to believe that he was a ball of fire and as
tough as rumor said he was. It remained for Bat Master-
son to finish him off, down at Fort Elliott, in the Texas
Panhandle.

Also it would seem that the presence of the noted Wes
Hardin should have rated a line or two, especially when,
as Earp says, Wes caught an ex-buffalo hunter on Douglas
Avenue, celebrating by wearing a silk hat, and found the
sight so offensive that he killed him.

This is the familiar silk-hat story that pops up in the

WYATT EARP ? S WICHITA 213

folklore of every frontier town. Wes was in Wichita very
briefly in midsummer, but he wasn't there to put any
notches on his gun. Actually, "Wes was running. He needed
money, and friends who could and would loan it to him
were in Wichita, men like Ben Thompson, John Good, the
Clements boys. On May 26 he killed Deputy Sheriff
Charles Webb, in Comanche, Texas. Webb shot first and
Wes was wounded superficially. By Texas standards it
was a justified killing, but Texas had had enough of the
Hardin clan.

Wes disappeared. Several days later, however, an
armed mob caught his brother Joe and his cousins Tom
and Bud Dixon, and lynched all three. It made Wes real
ize that it was time to get out of Texas. Once he had got
what he came for, he left Wichita, went to New Orleans,
and on to Florida, gambling, running a saloon, and con
tinuing to lead a turbulent life.

Brown Bowen, his brother-in-law, went into exile with
him. Brown Bowen, every bit as savage a human wolf as
Wes, had a fistful of warrants out on him, including mur
der. The Texas Bangers finally tracked the pair down and
arrested them at Pensacola Junction, Florida, in August
1877. They had a difficult time getting the prisoners back
to Texas and lodging them in the Austin jail. The roster
of his fellow-inmates, as Wes awaited trial, reads like a
Who ? s Who of Texas gun slingers. 1

It is true that the four Clements boys and Simp Dixon
came up the trail with a herd that summer and went into
camp on the Cowskin. In enumerating the leaders of what
Earp calls the Manning Clements gang, who supposedly
tried to tree Wichita, he includes Tom and Bud Dixon
which would have surprised the mob that had left them
dangling from the limb of a hackberry tree, away back in
May of '74.

That brings us to Ben Thompson. In all Wichita there

214 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

was no man with such a fearsome reputation, none with
whom trouble was so likely to originate. In the eyes of the
Texans, though in a slightly different way, he stood as
high as Shang Pierce. Right or wrong, they would have
supported him as they did in Abilene and Ellsworth. He
was in Wichita for half of the '74 season and throughout
'75. And yet, one can search the police court records of
those years without finding his name, which would indi
cate that he was behaving himself.

At first Ben lived at the Douglas Avenue Hotel. In '75
he found quarters with a private family. He was doing
well. He had made an arrangement with Whitey Hupp
to run a faro bank in the Keno House. His wife Kate and
son Ben, Jr., were living in Austin, and by all accounts he
kept them in comfortable circumstances.

Had there been any truth to Earp's story of having
made Ben crawl in Ellsworth, Ben Thompson would have
been his bitter, implacable enemy for the rest of his life.
That was the nature of the man. It is not within the
bounds of reason to suppose that he could have been
thrown together with Earp for a year and a half without
attempting to square his account with him.

But no such encounter occurred. If you take Earp's
word for it, their relations were on a friendly basis. There
was no reason why they shouldn't have been, for in
Wichita they were meeting for the first time. But fifty
years later, in telling the story of his life, the Famous
Marshal gives Ben's peaceful conduct a twist that, all else
aside, forever blasts the Ellsworth tale as an invention
of his imagination.

He says Ben came to him and tipped him off that
Manning Clements, his brothers, and assorted Texans
were planning to take over the town and run him out, that
he wanted Earp to understand that he had refused to
have any part in it.

WYATT EAKP'S WICHITA 215

By such means does Wyatt seek to bolster his Ells
worth story, picturing Ben Thompson as still knuckling
under to him and trying to curry favor, even though it
meant playing traitor to his own kind, the Texans.

As had been said before, Ben's faults were many, but
there is nothing in the tumultuous record of this snarling,
savage human tiger even faintly to suggest that he was
ever a betrayer of his friends. Later, after Earp had
heroically crushed the mythical plot against him, he has
Ben writing him from Austin, asking if he can come back
to "Wichita with George Peshaur and open a game.

Ben must have tried to get out of his grave when that
was penned. A whining, sniveling Ben Thompson was
something no Texan had ever seen.

A careful search of the files of the Eagle and the Beacon
discloses no word of an attempt by Manning Clements,
his brothers, and assorted relatives and friends to "take
over the town" an event that surely would have been
front-page news. Nor would the exigencies of local poli
tics explain the complete silence of the Eagle and the
Beacon, for they were on opposite sides of the political
fence. It would seem that Manning Clements' threat to
the peace and security of Wichita was a vast secret that
remained locked up in Wyatt 's mind, or imagination, for
half a century. His biographer, intent on projecting his
subject as the superman of frontier marshals, pulls out
all stops in an admittedly thrilling account of how Wyatt
crushed the " Clements Gang" making it the peg on
which is hung Wyatt Earp's claim that he " tamed
Wichita."

But again, why was Manning Clements chosen as the
villain? Perhaps the following may suggest a reason.

On June 20, 1959, while engaged in further research
on Wichita in its cow-town days, the writer was urged
by Eichard M. Long, editor of the Wichita Eagle and

216 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

president of the Kansas State Historical Society, to
spend the afternoon with Captain Sam Jones, a venerable
and respected Negro citizen, then in his ninety-third year,
who had come out of the Spanish-American War with
the rank of captain. Born and reared in Wichita, he
was one of the few living witnesses left who could speak
with first hand knowledge of the riotous days of the
middle 70 's.

At once the question arose as to how much dependence
could be put on the memory of a man of that age. The
writer was assured that he would find the captain's
mind unimpaired by his advanced age; that he was
mentally as keen and alert as the average man in his
sixties. Further, that when lawyers were in dispute in a
civil action as to certain names, initials, and locations
Captain Jones was called in by the court and his testi
mony accepted as conclusive.

It was a rewarding afternoon. We spoke of many things
as we sat under a tree in Captain Jones' front yard.
Wyatt Earp 's name came into the conversation. It went
like this :

"Captain, did Wyatt Earp tame Wichita?"
"I know the story. There's nothing to it." It was
said with an indulgent smile. "If anybody cleaned up
Wichita it was Mike Meagher. Wyatt was just a police
man. I used to see him every day. I sold newspapers
and shined shoes on Douglas Avenue when I was a boy.
He knew me ; we got along all right. My father was the
porter at the Douglas Avenue Hotel. My hands .were
small. It was my job to go to the lamp room at the hotel
every morning and fill the lamps and clean the chimneys. ' '
"Captain, was there much shooting 1 ?"
"There was a lot of it." He laughed. "I knew a
couple places where I could crawl under the sidewalk
when it began. There was lots of excitement in those

WYATT EARP'S WICHITA 217

days. It wasn't nothing to see two or three hundred cow
boys parading up and down the Avenue and Main Street.
Between eleven and twelve in the morning was the
quietest time of the day. That's when you'd see some of
the girls from the sporting houses coming uptown to do
their shopping. They'd head for Miller's or Karatof-
sky's. They behaved themselves. They weren't allowed
in the saloons, but there was no law against them being
on the street. I knew some of them. When a girl from
Bessie Earp's house came along, she always spoke to
me. My grandmother was the cook in Bessie Earp's
whorehouse."

This candid statement regarding the nature of Ms
grandmother's employment may strike the reader as
rather startling, but it was made in such a matter-of-fact
manner that no moral obloquy was attached to it. Cer
tainly not in the captain's mind, for he repeated the
statement several times in the course of the afternoon.

Presently we were talking about Manning Clements.
" There isn't much I can tell you about him," Captain
Jones said. "I saw him only a time or two. But I knew
who he was, all right. I often heard my grandmother tell
how Manning and his brothers came busting into Bessie's
place early one evening looking for Wyatt. He was there,
but they didn't find him."

In piecing the story together, it went like this: the
Clements boys had come north with an outfit that was
camped on the CowsMn. Early that morning the herd
had been driven to the stockyards. The loading was
finished about five o'clock that afternoon. Part of the
crew, including Gip Clements and Simp Dixon Manning
was not with them stopped off in town for drinks be
fore crossing the bridge on their way back to camp. As
they came up the sidewalk, walking four abreast, they
ran into Earp and tried to crowd him off the walk. He

218 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

shouldered Grip aside and went on about his business.
They expressed their opinion of him, but he was armed
and they weren't. The incident appeared to be closed.
That wasn't the way Manning and his brothers saw it.
By eight o'clock they were back in town, armed and with
the avowed intention of squaring the matter. When Earp
learned that they were loking for him, he gave them the
slip by hurrying down the alley in back of the Texas
House to Bessie's place on Water Street.

"My grandmother always had something good to eat
for me," the captain continued. "I was allowed only in
the kitchen, but I could peek into the dining room.
Many times I saw the big, canvas covered trunk in the
corner in which Grandma said Bessie hid Wyatt that
evening. It was one of those old humpbacked trunks."

He recalled with interest the tips he used to earn
running errands for Bessie and her girls.

"I used to carry messages for them down to Emil
Warner's beer garden on the corner of Douglas Avenue.
There was always two-bits in it for me."

Captain Jones got back to his grandmother's story
presently.

"She said Wyatt came in through the kitchen that
night and she got Bessie for him. He told Bessie she had
to hide him; that the Clements boys were after Mm.
Bessie made him take off his boots and get into the
trunk. She put on Wyatt 's boots and ran across the back
yard, leaving some tracks. She had just finished hiding
the boots when Manning and the rest of them showed up.
Bessie told Manning they were too late ; that Wyatt had
run out the back way. She opened the door and showed
him the fresh tracks. He took her word for it. Wyatt
spent the rest of the night upstairs. In the morning, the
outfit the Clements boys were with pulled out for Texas.
That's the only trouble I ever heard of Wyatt having

WYATT EARP'S WICHITA 219

with them. It made him hate them. But he had left for
Dodge before they came north in 76. "

This interview was given in the presence of two re
liable witnesses. It may explain why Earp nominated
Manning Clements to play the role of his antagonist. Of
course, it reveals Earp in such an unfavorable light that
his admirers will brand it as fiction, though nothing could
be more fictional than his own story of how he subdued
Wichita.

By mid- August it became painfully clear that the num
ber of Longhorns that would reach Sedgwick County
that season would fall eighty to ninety thousand short
of the figures established in '73 and '74. Dodge City was
not getting all of them. The Missouri, Kansas and Texas
Eailroad had built down through the Cherokee, Creek,
and Choctaw nations, reached Colbert's Ferry on Red
River, bridged the Red, and established the new town of
Denison, Texas. The Houston and Texas Central Rail
road had built up from the south, meeting the Katy
(Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad) at Denison.
A market for Texas cattle was now available for the
eastern half of the state at its own doorstep. Thousands
of Longhorns that formerly would have been trailed
north were now going aboard the cars at Denison and
other Texas shipping points. 2

The longer haul by rail from Texas to Kansas City or
Chicago meant increased freight costs. As a result, Texas
prices on beef steers were lower than Kansas prices.
That had wqrked in Wichita's favor in '73 and '74. But
the Katy had trimmed its rates to equalize the situation.
Its financial position was desperate ; it had to have more
business. The company managed to weather the panic
of '73, but the depression that continued in Wall Street,
long after the country as a whole had recovered, forced
it into receivership in 1874. Jay Gould, the ubiquitous

220 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

mortician of distressed railroads, was in the driver's
seat and manipulating the Katy's assets to his own
peculiar advantage.

There was some hope in Wichita that he would wreck
the road. As for Dodge City, the optimists predicted that
it wouldn't last long. There again freight rates were
higher than from Wichita. For the present, however, the
town was caught in the jaws of a nutcracker.

The steadily increasing influx of men interested in
buying land good bottom land was now bringing four
dollars an acre or taking up claims did not compensate
in the public mind for the falling off of the cattle market.
Having enjoyed the big money the Texas cattle trade
had brought to Wichita, the town wasn't interested in
becoming a settled, fenced-off farming community, its
prosperity dependent on the vagaries of the weather.

For the first time in three years carpenters and masons
found themselves out of work. Plans for increasing the
size of the stockyards were shelved. Soon after the sea
son closed, the Lowes closed their dance-hall in Delano,
Rowdy Joe going to Denison, and Kate taking herself
off to Dodge. It was an accurate barometer of how things
were going.

Wichita took stock of itself that winter and concluded
that it was in no danger of blowing away and becoming
a ghost camp. Of all the towns spawned by the Texas
cattle trade, it was the biggest and the best. No matter
how much competition it faced, it was so advantageously
placed that for years to come it must continue to attract
enough trail herds to keep it a prosperous if not the
foremost cattle market in Kansas. What Marsh Murdock
was saying in the Eagle about Wichita eventually be
coming the center of one of the great granaries of the
world that where cattle had built only saloons and
gambling dens, wheat would build schools and churches

WYATT EARP'S WICHITA 221

and good roads made pleasant reading, but very few-
believed it.

Wyatt Earp says he would have left Wichita that
winter had not Mike Meagher urged him to stay, with
Meagher promising that if he won in the spring election
he would make Wyatt "his chief deputy/' This is an
inadvertent admission on Earp's part that he was not,
or ever had been, deputy marshal of Wichita. 3

The spring election came along. Again it was Bill Smith
who opposed Meagher, The campaign became a mud-
slinging affair, Smith charging that, with Mike's knowl
edge, Policemen Earp and Behrens had collected license
money and had not turned it into the city treasurer. He
spread other stories to the effect that Meagher had made
a deal with Wyatt, that, if elected, Earp's brothers
Virgil and Morgan would be sent for and put on the po
lice force, along with Jim Earp. He tore into Wyatt 's
record in Wichita, brought Bessie Earp into the picture,
and claimed that the real issue was not between Meagher
and himself, but whether the town wanted the police
department taken over by what he called the "Earp
gang."

Whether the charges were true, and very likely they
weren't, they created a lot of talk. Meagher went to see
Smith. Wyatt burst in on them and gave Smith a beat
ing.

Earp knew how to use his fists. In his later years,
born of his interest in what used to be called "the manly
art of self-defense," he became a manager of prize
fighters and a referee. Among the fighters he managed
was "Doc" Jack Kearns, who in time became manager
of the world's heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey.
Without going into that phase of his career, some facts
can be recited.

Earp had come to San Diego, California, during the

222 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

land boom of the late '80 ? s and made a small fortune. He
acquired an interest in two gambling establishments and
raced his own horses at the old Pacific Beach track. He
is described in the city directory of 1887 as "Wyatt
Earp, capitalist. " He refereed a forty-round fight in
San Diego and another scheduled match of a hundred
rounds, which had to be held across the border in
Tiajuana, because of local objection to a fight of that
duration it actually lasted sixty rounds. At Mechanics '
Pavilion, in San Francisco, on the night of December 2,
1896, he stepped into the ring as a substitute referee at
the last moment (so he says) to officiate in the bout be
tween Bob Fitzsimmons and Sailor Tom Sharkey, the
underdog* In the eighth round he awarded the decision
to Sharkey on a foul, to country-wide howls of "fix" and
" robbery. "

Some years later Riley Grannon, an "honest gambler "
if there ever was one, said that he and other big bettors
knew early in the afternoon that Earp was to referee
the fight and throw it to Sharkey. 4

Earp's attack on Bill Smith had immediate repercus
sions- The altercation took place on Sunday evening. He
was arrested in the morning, fined thirty dollars, and
removed from the force. Here is the way the Beacon saw
it in its edition of April 5, 1876:

On last Sunday night a difficulty occurred be
tween Policeman Erp [sic] and Win. Smith,
candidate for city marshal. Erp was arrested
for violation of the peace and order of the city
and was fined on Monday afternoon by his honor
Judge Atwood, $30 and cost, and was relieved
from the police force.

Occurring on the eve of the city election, and
having its origin in the canvass, it aroused gen
eral partisan interest throughout the city. The

WYATT EARP'S WICHITA 223

rumors, freely circulated Monday morning, re
flected very severely upon [Mike" Meagher] our
city marshal. It was stated and quite generally
credited that it was a put up job on the part of
the city marshal and his assistant, to put the
rival candidate for marshal Jiors de combat and
thus remove an obstacle in the way of re-election
of the city marshal.

These rumors, we say, were quite largely
credited, not withstanding their essential im
probability and their inconsistency with the well
known character of Mike Meagher, who is noted
for his manly bearing and personal courage.
The evidence before the court fully exonerated
[sic] Meagher from the charge of a cowardly
conspiracy to mutilate and disable a rival candi
date, but showed that he repeatedly ordered his
subordinate [Wyatt Earp] to avoid any per
sonal collision with Smith, and when the en
counter took place, Mike used his utmost
endeavor to separate the combatants. If there is
any room to reflect on the marshal, it is that he
did not order his subordinate out of Smith's -
room as soon as he entered, knowing as he did,
that Erp had fight on the brain.

On April 19, following the election-eve fracas, and
though Meagher won handily, the City Commission
voted 2 for and 6 against rehiring Wyatt Earp. A motion
was made to reconsider the vote. On a second ballot
there was a tie. The matter was then tabled and no
further action taken.

On May 22 the Police Commission (Police Court Judge
Atwood and City Marshal Meagher) recommended that
the " Scrip of W. Earp and John Behrens be withheld
until all moneys collected by them for the city be turned
over to the City Treasurer. It was sanctioned and ac
cepted. " The report further recommended that the

224 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

vagrancy act should be enforced against the "2 Earps."
In other words, Wyatt and Jim Earp now had no visible
means of support.

Thus Wyatt bowed out of Wichita. It was not a bom
bardment of frantic appeals by mail and telegraph from
Mayor Hoover, of Dodge City, that sped him on his
way to the Cowboy Capital.

CHAPTER XXI

THE BORDER QUEEN

@ALDWELL, the Border Queen, lay
astride the Chisholm Trail where the
famous trace emerged from Indian
Territory and crossed the line into Kansas. For a dozen
years it had wallowed in the dust kicked up by a million
passing Longhorns bound for Abilene and Ellsworth,
Newton and Wichita. It was not a cow town if that term
is used to designate a point at which Texas cattle could
be marketed and shipped. Caldwell was a trail town, wild,
lawless, and apparently destined to garner only the
crumbs that fell from the bountiful table of the rich Texas
cattle trade. Until as late as 1879 the nearest railhead was
sixty miles away in Wichita.

Captain C. H. Stone and others formed a town company
in 1870, an'd, after casting around for a site, platted one
on March 1, in newly organized Sumner County, and
named it Caldwell, in honor of U.S. Senator Alexander
T. CaldwelL

Captain Stone and his party had been on the ground
for a month, cutting cottonwood and hackberry trees on
Bluff Creek, hauling them out, and hewing and fitting
them for the first permanent building, a story and a half
high. By the first of May it was filled with goods wet and

225

226 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

dry to supply the needs of passing cowboys and other
wayfarers, and operated by Captain Stone and J. H.
Dagner. On opening day its sales amounted to $711. For
tunately for the proprietors, the 6th U.S. Cavalry, Colonel
James Oakes commanding, was camped nearby, on its
way to Fort Kiley from Forts Eichardson and Griffin,
Texas, by way of Fort Sill, in the Territory.

Herds had been coming up the Chisholm Trail since
'67, but the first herd to go through the new town of
Caldwell passed on May 6. It soon had three or four
places in which whiskey was the principal commodity
sold Fitzgerald's saloon, Cos and Epperson's store, and
John Dickie's dramshop. The raw little settlement be
came a fitting-out point for buffalo hunters and the ship
ping of hides, as well as a convenient stopping place for
the freighting outfits bound to or from the Army posts
in the Territory. As has been noted, Wyatt Earp wintered
at Stone's store for a year or two.

Stone and his fellow promoters were not heartened,
however, by any influx of men interested in buying town
lots. Wellington, the county seat, twenty-seven miles to
the north, was becoming a healthy, established community.
The southern section of Sumner County was not an un
inhabited waste. Along the ChikasMa River and Fall and
Bluff creeks most of the bottom land had been claimed
by adventurous men, some of whom were no better than
outlaws. Women were conspicuous by their absence.

It is impossible to delve into the early history of Cald
well without encountering George D. Freeman. He was
there almost from the beginning and has set it all down
with unbearable prolixity and aggravating sentimentality
in his book Midnight and Noonday, or Dark Deeds Un
raveled. But he was often a participant, as well as com
mentator, and his contribution to the folklore history of
Sumner County should not be belittled.

THE BOEDER QUEEN" 227

Freeman had left his home and family in Augusta, in
Butler County, and was on Falls Creek, seeking a good
government claim on which he could file. This is the way
he tells it :

"To say we were pleased with the country would be
putting it too mild. We were perfectly delighted with the
beautiful and ever-changing panorama . . . We had
traveled quite a distance up Falls Creek and over to an
other stream called Bluff Creek. It was not difficult to
find plenty of excellent claims, but it seemed that all that
were very desirable had been taken some time previous
to our arrival there. I learned afterwards that many
times a half-dozen or more claims were taken by one
individual under different names. The taking of a claim
simply consisted of placing on said claim in the form of
a log house foundation, four logs and sticking in the
ground a board upon which was the taker's name. It will
be readily seen that the one who sailed under the most
aliases, could take the most claims.

"The few parties at that time up and down the creeks
were single men, and generally lived in a dugout and
'batched it.' By taking several claims each, they would
be prepared to sell a claim to anyone who came into the
country and wanted to secure a home for himself and
family. I had come to the country in search of a home and
expected to get one (free) at 'Uncle Sam's' price under
the exemption laws. Here I found, that for the sake of
gain, roving plainsmen had taken and marked off all of
the choicest claims. Of course a person could have
'jumped' one of those already taken, but the character
of the ones holding them led one to conclude that it might
be a little dangerous. To shoot a man in those days was
not considered a very grave offense. 5 ' *

Back in camp he and his companion were discussing
the claim matter, when they were joined by a Mr. Reed,

228 WILD, WOOLLY AIJHD WICKED

a Scotsman, who had a fine claim on Falls Creek. Keed
had had a series of misfortunes and wanted to sell.

i * After some bartering, ' ' Freeman continues, * * I bought
his claim, agreeing to give him the horse I was driving
and $50 upon my return from a trip after my family. This
piece of land afterward became very valuable, it being
a part of the town [Caldwell], and the Eock Island and
Sante Fe Depots were built upon it" 2

The first recorded killing in infant Caldwell came with
the slaying of George Pease, a recognized claim jumper.
With three or four friends of similar character, he lived
in a dugout on Bluff Creek, five miles east of Caldwell.
They spent most of their time in town, drinking. When a
prospective customer came along who had his eye on a
particular claim, they assured him that they would put
him on it for a price. Terms being agreed to, it was their
practice to intimidate the owner by one means or another,
usually including a brutal beating Pease was a big man
of two hundred and twenty pounds and run him off.

Living together a few miles west of town, and running
a small herd of cattle, were three men by the name of
Mack, Davidson, and 'Bannon. The last was a Canadian,
a mild, inoffensive little man.- Obviously he and his associ
ates had had trouble of some sort with Pease and his
friends. The record does not say so, but the claim junipers
could have shown the same fondness for another man's
beef that they had for his land. However that may be, the
two groups met in Stone's store on the afternoon of July
2, 1871. Pease, who was drunk, Immediately tried to pro
voke 'Bannon into a fight. The latter, knowing he was
no match for the big man, walked away. Pease followed
him outside and continued to badger him. When the
former tried to grab him, O'Bannon drew his revolver,
intending to shoot Pease. But it was an old-fashioned
cap-and-ball pistol and it misfired. Pease's friends led

THE BOBDBE QUEEN" 229

him back inside. Half an hour later he again went after
O'Bannon who had borrowed a revolver. "When he
squeezed the trigger this time, Pease tumbled into the
dust. O'Bannon faced the dead man's friends. He seemed
singularly undisturbed.

"Gentlemen, I have killed Pease," he said. "Now if
there is any one here that wants to take it up, they have
the privilege of doing so." 3

No one was so inclined. O'Bannon got on his horse and
rode out of town. Deputy Sheriff Boss arrived in the
morning to investigate the shooting, but O'Bannon had
left the country during the night. He was seen later in
Abilene, but no effort was made to bring Tiim to trial.

It is accepted as historical fact that Coronado, in his
search for the fabulous Seven Cities of Cibola, reached
present-day Kansas in 1542. The legend that he camped
on Lookout Mountain, a red sandstone bluff, from which
Bluff Creek takes its name, and which looks down on the
town from the south, is one of the pillars on which Cald-
well's folklore rests. The romantic tale of the Texas cow
boy who was killed in the Last Chance saloon and whose
body was carried to Lookout Mountain by his friends
then recognized as being across the line in Indian Terri
tory and interred there to escape the ignominy of being
buried in the soil of the state that they believed had
spawned John Brown, the abolitionist, is universally be
lieved.

There is nothing fanciful about the Last Chance saloon
its swinging sign read "First Chance" on one side,
"Last Chance" on the other, its pertinency depending in
which direction the passer-by was traveling. It was sup
posedly the last place where liquor could be bought on
the trail into the Nations, and the first oasis for thirsty
cowboys coming north. Cowboy Joe Wiedeman, a lively
old-timer living in Caldwell, whose memory goes back a

230 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

long way, says there were a lot of places in Indian Ter
ritory where whiskey could be bought. It is unlikely that
the peddlers who surreptitiously sold firewater to the
Indians drew any color line against thirsty cowboys.

The Last Chance had been dragged up and down Sedg-
wick County for several years before it came to its final
resting place on the Chisholm Trail. This was before
Sumner County was organized and some time before
Captain Stone built his store. In all the immensity of the
surrounding prairies there was nothing else. Long after
Caldwell induced the trail drivers to detour around the
town to spare it from some of the dust that fouled the
air, beginning at the Last Chance, it continued to be a
fixture. It was still there as late as 1887.

"Last Friday night/' the Caldwell News reported in
its issue of December 21, "the old building southeast of
town, famous in days gone by as the 'Last Chance', was
burned to the ground. It was owned by Wm. "Wykes and
used partly as a storehouse besides being occupied by
"Wm. Wykes, Jr. and family.

"Mr. Wykes does not know how the fire caught, as
no one was at home at the time. ' ' 4

This differs greatly from Freeman's story. He says
a posse surrounded the place, looking for a man named
McCarty, who had killed two men, Fielder and Anderson.
Believing that McCarty was hiding in the building, the
posse demanded the right to search the premises. This
privilege being denied, quilts were soaked in coal oil and
placed against the walls. "A burning match was touched
to the quilts and all was aflame. "

Evidently the wanted man was not there. After re
counting how the door was opened and the inmates car
ried out the counter and several barrels of whiskey, ex
changing shots with the posse, which did no serious
damage, Freeman continues : * * The light from the burning

THE BORDER QUEEN 231

building made it almost as light as day and had McCarty
been there he could easily have been seen; and as he
failed to make an appearance, the crowd went back to
town. 3 '

One hesitates to brand Freeman's story a fabrication,
but it seems incredible that the Caldwell News could have
reported the incident as no more than the burning of an
old landmark*

The Federal Government had designated the 37th
parallel, north latitude, as the southern boundary of
Kansas. Eunning east and west, approximately two and
a half miles below it was the line run in a survey of Osage
and Cherokee Indian lands. The disputed strip lying in
between became known as the Cherokee Strip. It was the
original Cherokee Strip. " Cherokee Strip" later became
a term loosely applied to a vast area (six million acres)
lying below the 37th parallel that was properly the
Cherokee Outlet. The Indians claimed the land lying in
between the two surveys, and so did Kansas. By the so-
called Act of May 11, 1872, which extinguished all Indian
claims to it, it was awarded to the state of Kansas. In
stead of hugging the border as it had formerly, Caldwell
found itself 2.47 miles from the line.

The land fine black loam with a porous subsoil was
offered for sale at once, at $2.00 an acre east of the
Arkansas Eiver and $1.50 west of it. Much of it was
taken up eagerly. In 1877, to close it out, the price was
reduced to $1.00.

To the east, in Labette County, the Missouri, Kansas
and Texas had invaded the country. A few months later
Masterson, the Katy historian, says: " ... a vast trans
formation had taken place along the Cherokee Strip.
Whereas the border previously had been delineated merely
as a line on a cartographer's tracing, by mid^summer
... it was startlingly visible. From east to west it appeared

232 WILD, WOOLLY A.'ND WICKED

as an even line, with fence nearly all the way on the
south side an unbroken prairie, on the north, farms,
orchards, pleasant dwellings, and every evidence of
civilization. ' ' 5

The changes that took place along the southern boun
dary of Sumner County were substantial but fell short
of being "a vast transformation." Caldwell began to
show symptoms of life. Several new stores and a restau
rant, "a chow house," were opened. Some houses were
built. It was a nightly custom for the big herds to bed
down near town, after having been watered at Falls
Creek. Caldwell had no police protection whatever, and
when the Texans rode in they "took the town over" rac
ing up and down the one short street, firing their pistols
and screeching their wild Texas yeU. But they spent
their money, and that was all Caldwell asked of them.

The town company found itself in difficulty when it
tried to close title to the land it had platted. A new
survey was necessary. Permission was granted by the
legislature and the errors were corrected. It caused more
of a stir in Caldwell than the panic that swept the
country at large in September. Aside from buffalo hides
and most of them had already been sent to market it
had nothing to sell, no cattle, no crops. By October the
low prices prevailing for beef worked in its favor. Thou
sands of Longhorns were put out to winter on the Chika-
slda and the creeks. It followed that the Texans would
squander their wages in Caldwell.

By the spring of 74, Caldwell was getting tough. Its
proximity to the Kansas-Indian Territory line appealed
to the outlaw who was on the dodge. Once across the line,
he was comparatively safe. A few U.S. marshals roamed
the Territory, working out of Fort Smith, Arkansas.
They seldom ventured into the long finger of present-day
Oklahoma that runs all the way out to New Mexico, known

THE BOEDER QUEEN 233

for a half century as No Man's Land, its only white in
habitants a scattering of hillbillies who lived on the
largesse of wanted men and befriended them. Cowboy
outlaws, the progenitors of such organized gangs as the
Daltons and the Doolins, were already looting Kansas
banks and sticking up trains. Between forays Caldwell
provided them with a reasonably safe haven in which to
squander the fruits of their trade.

It seemed that every hillbilly in the Cherokee country
had a patch of corn and translated it into " white mule"
that was run across the border and dispensed in Cald
well J s numerous saloons. It was responsible for the com
plaint of many old-time Texans that more bad whiskey
was sold in Caldwell than any other town in Kansas,

In the almost seven years that had elapsed since the
first Longhorns were put aboard the cars in Abilene, trail
and cow-town violence had seldom ended in lynchings.
They became fairly frequent in Simmer County. It points
up the fact that the lawless element that gathered in Cald
well differed in a marked degree from the undesirables
with whom Abilene and Ellsworth had had to contend.
The town was overrun with horse thieves, rustlers, and
outlaws of every shade.

In July a bunch of stolen horses were recovered. There
was strong evidence that L. B. Hasbrouck, a member of
the Sumner County bar, Charley Smith (an alias and be
lieved to be the son of a former governor of Illinois),
A. C. McClean, a heretofore respected citizen, William
Brooks, Judd Calkins, and Dave Terrill, the last three
having no visible means of support, were the thieves. All
six resided in Caldwell or its environs. Men who had
had horses stolen in the past several months accused
Hasbrouck and his companions of being the horse-thief
ring responsible for a long list of thefts. During the morn
ing of July 27 there was some talk to the effect that they

234 WILD, WOOLLY AISTD WICKED

should be strung up. It continued to grow, and by noon
it had risen to a point where it needed only a leader to
be carried out- Someone his identity is unknown sent
word to Sheriff John Davis, in Wellington. He organized
a posse and left for Caldwell at once, arriving there in
time to take charge of the situation.

Excitement continued to run high. There was no further
talk of lynching the horsethieves, at least not openly.
Though no formal charges had been made against Has-
brouck and the others, and Davis had no warrants on
them, the sheriff proceeded to take them into custody.
Perhaps his excuse was that he was protecting them
against the vengeance of a mob.

McLean was arrested at his home, one mile south
of Caldwell, Hasbrouck was captured in a cornfield. Dave
Terrill, Calkins, and Brooks were trailed to a dugout
east of town. Terrill and Calkins surrendered quietly.
Brooks gave himself up after being besieged for some
time. Sheriff Davis started them for Wellington in the
custody of part of the posse. Smith, a one-armed man
(his honest name was said to be Edwards) had secured
a horse and headed for the Territory. Sheriff Davis and
a dozen possemen took up the chase and overhauled him.

All six men were lodged in the Sumner County jail
late that night, Monday. The following day County At
torney Willsie took them before Judge John Woods for
a preliminary hearing. Terrill was discharged. McLean
and Calkins freed on bail. That evening a number of men
rode into Wellington. It produced so much excitement in
town that Sheriff Davis and his deputies feared that an
attempt was to be made to break into the jail, take the
prisoners out, and lynch them, a feeling that was shared
by the three horse thieves.

Davis deputized several additional men and prepared
to defend the jail. But the night passed off peacefully.

THE BOEDER QUEEN 235

On Wednesday night, however, some time after mid
night, the jail was broken into. Hasbrouck, Brooks, and
Smith were quietly removed. In the morning Wellington
found them dangling from the limb of a big eottonwood
near the Slate Creek bridge.

Though it would seem to have been quite unnecessary,
a coroner's jury was empaneled and an inquest held.
Its sober conclusion was that the Messrs. Hasbrouck,
Smith, and Brooks had been lynched by parties unknown.
The Sumner County Press observed several weeks later
that there had been a noticeable dropping off in the
number of horses being reported stolen. But Caldwell
had scarcely recovered from the Slate Creek hangings
when it discovered another victim of Judge Lynch "idling
his time away under a eottonwood tree," as the Press
put it.*

A German boot and shoemaker named Frederick Riser
came to Caldwell early in May and opened a shop. The
town had need of a man of his calling. He proved himself
to be an excellent workman, and with his jolly nature
soon became popular. Periodically, however, he would
close his shop and go on a spree. But even when drinking
he was never troublesome; he was always the same
"happy Dutchman."

For four weeks a young man who had the air of a
minor desperado had been hanging out in the saloons
and spending his money in a manner that suggested he
had not come by it honestly; he struck up an acquaintance
with Riser and they spent the morning drinking together.
The young tough identified himself as T. T, Oliver, very
likely an alias. In John Dickie's saloon he was overheard
telling the G-erman that he was in the market for a new
pair of boots. The two of them left the saloon arm in
arm and crossed the street to Riser's shop.

What followed is not clear. The day was warm it

236 WILD, WOOLLY AOT> WICKED

was the seventeenth of August and the door of the shop
stood open. Passers-by said they heard them arguing
heatedly over the price of the boots. No sale was made,
and when Oliver went back across the street to continue
drinking, he was full of threats against Riser, claiming
that the German had tried to cheat him.

Oliver continued to hang out in the saloons. On Thurs
day noon, August 20, he purchased a revolver and car
tridges, saying that he was leaving for the Territory.
Instead of going at once he waited around until the middle
of the afternoon, when, finding Eiser alone in his shop,
repairing a pair of boots, he stepped to the door and
fired two shots, one of which struck the German in the
neck and killed him instantly. Oliver started to run. But
the shooting had been witnessed and he was pursued and
captured. Caldwell was inflamed over the cold-blooded
murder of Riser. There was, as might have been expected,
talk of lynching Oliver. Cooler heads prevailed for the
time and he was locked up and put under guard.

"Some time during the night/' says the Arkansas
City Traveler, "he succeeded in making an exit, assisted
by outsider s." The identity of the "outsiders" was never
disclosed, but who they were can be imagined. Oliver was
taken to the banks of little Spring Creek, "making/' the
Traveler continues, "one more added to the train of
JCudge Lynch 's victims." 7

CHAPTER XXII

LEAN YEARS

riO UNDERSTAND how white men

n [cattlemen were able to operate in so-

LJ called Indian country long before the

Federal Government conducted the various " openings, "

a bit of Cherokee tribal law is necessary.

Under Cherokee law an individual Indian might hold
as his own as much of the tribal lands as he could fence
and improve. However, if he neglected or deserted his
homestead, it automatically reverted to the Cherokee
Nation. Many shrewd Cherokees lived a life of ease
merely by fencing great prairie pastures and leasing them
to enterprising whites who had gained entry into their
country, legally or illegally, and stayed by taking out
annual work permits issued by the Cherokee National
Council. These permits usually were sworn to and paid
for by the Indians who leased their lands, but the many
desperadoes who flaunted permits were living indictments
of venal officials, both Indian and white, who trafficked
in these valuable passports. 1

In the middle and late '70 's as many as one hundred
outfits were running cattle on Cherokee lands. 2 A Katy
survey, probably not too accurate, stated that there were
"upwards of 75,000 Longhorns in convenient shipping

237

238 WILD, WOOLLY AETD WICKED

distance of Fort Gibson [or Gibson Station]." When the
Cherokee Strip Livestock Association came into being, it
acknowledged having as many as forty thousand fat cattle
in the Territory. This was a big operation, and after the
railroad reached Caldwell the Association established
handsome offices there.

In passing, it is interesting to note that Texas herds
were crossing the Eed and coming np the Texas Eoad to
meet the head of Katy steel even before it passed out of
the Cherokee Nation and entered the Creek Nation, at
present-day Muskogee. It is somewhat amazing, however,
to be told in a communication from General Manager
Stevens to the president of the company that the Chero-
kees were levying a tax of $1.75 a head on Texas cattle.
He calls the tax " devilish/' " unjust," and looks forward
to advancing into the Creek Nation, where it will be
fifty cents less. 3

Why the Texans should pay it either directly or in
directly and it surely fell back on them when it had
long been figured that the over-all cost of sending a steer
up the Chisholm Trail to one of the Kansas markets,
cowboy wages included, was no more than a dollar and a
half is difficult to understand.

Whatever the explanation, the Katy's cattle business
was tremendous. Two years after it arrived in Denison,
the American and Texas Refrigerator Car Company, a
Katy subsidiary, was shipping dressed beef to the East.
Since the first crude attempts to ship freshly killed beef
by rail in iced ears there had been a continuing improve
ment in the necessary rolling stock, but it was not until
the Katy put its refrigerator cars into operation that any
thing comparable to our modern day "reefers" went into
service. It represented a major investment, and at a time
when many railroads were hovering on the edge of bank
ruptcy.

YEARS 239

Joseph G. McCoy, the "Father of the Texas Cattle
Trade," and who had become its handy man, had come to
Denison and was actively engaged in the new enterprise.

Long before it became a formal organization the Chero
kee Strip Livestock Association had established a working
code. Eonndup dates were set, a means of settling disputes
agreed on, and co-operative measures taken to fight
rustlers, animal predators, and prairie fires. It had no
money other than a charge of ten dollars levied on each
member. As late as 1879 the grazing fees it paid its
Cherokee landlords were as little as $1100. By 1882 the
figure had grown to $41,233. In 1888 it was up to $200,000.
By then the Government was moving in on it, charging
that it had used corrupt influence on the Cherokee Na
tional Council to obtain its leases, and warned the Associa
tion that the Cherokee title to the land was of doubtful
value ; that grazing contracts with Indians were not valid ;
that the U. S. had authority to remove cattlemen at any
time and take over the land in the public interest. 4

It was the beginning of the end.

No amount of secrecy could conceal the fact that rela
tively important sums of money were leaving Caldwell
at purposely irregular intervals for the cattle outfits in
the Territory. To waylay a supposed messenger and re
lieve him of the funds he was believed to be carrying
proved to be a highly speculative business, for oftener
than not he proved to be a decoy, and the man carrying
the money got through unmolested. But with all the cun
ning that could be used to foil the desperadoes, there
were a number of robberies. No other reason exists for
the widely circulated tale of the '70 's that Pat Hennessey
was carrying a sum of money when he was intercepted and
murdered near the Bull Foot stage station.

Freeman claims to have talked with William E. Malla-
ley, who found the body. Some of the purported facts

24:0 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

Freeman gives were subsequently proven to be correct,
but there are gaps in Ms story. He neither suggests a
motive for the crime nor gives a clue as to who committed
it.

Fifteen years later it was still a mystery, at which time,
in typical Wild West style, the St. Louis Republic pub
lished what it claimed to be "The Story of Pat Hennes
sey's Fight to the Death." It states that Pat was killed
by Cheyenne Indians which he was but it shed no light
on the events leading up to the massacre at Bull Foot
station and what followed.

First of all who was Pat Hennessey? He was the best-
known and best-liked boss teamster hauling government
supplies from Wichita to Fort Reno and Fort Sill. He
left Caldwell on July 1 with a train of four wagons,
bound for the Kiowa and Comanche Agency with a load of
coffee and sugar to be delivered to the agent, J. M. Hay-
worth. With Pat were George Fant, Thomas Callaway,
and Ed Cook.

When they reached the Bull Foot station at noon, July
4, they found it in ashes, from which smoke was still
rising. They recognized the work of Indians. All summer
the Cheyennes and the Comanches, aroused by the wan
ton killing of the buffaloes, had been killing white men
and committing depredations.. It was estimated that as
many as eighty whites had been killed. Whether Hennes
sey and his companions knew anything about the big
battle that had occurred at Adobe Walls, in the Texas
Panhandle on June 27, between the assembled buffalo
hunters and a combined force of hundreds of Cheyennes
and Comanches, will never be known. Very likely they
didn't.

There was no sign of the station tender and his as
sistant. It was learned later that they had taken warning
and fled. Hennessey gave the word and the four wagons

LEAN YEABS 241

moved on at once. They had gone no more than an eighth
of a mile when they were surrounded by several hundred
screeching Cheyennes. Fant, Callaway, and Cook were
killed and scalped. Pat Hennessey, badly wounded, was
tied to the rear wheel of his wagon and scalped. Several
bushels of grain were taken from the wagons, piled around
him, and set afire.

Something frightened the Indians off before their work
was finished. It was a war party of sages whom the
Cheyennes mistook for soldiers. This was arrived at by
Osage admissions some time later. They plundered the
wagons, fired them, and made off with the teams.

To get back to Freeman. This is the story Mallaley told
him. In company with J. Miles, the Indian agent at Fort
Reno, J. A. Covington, his wife, and others, they had left
Fort Eeno for Caldwell. On reaching the Bed Fork Ranch,
they were told that the Cheyennes were "out" to the
north and were warned against going farther. They went
on, however, and as they neared the site of the Bull Foot
station they saw it had been burned to the ground. This
was on July 5. Off to the left of the trail they found the
charred wagons. Mallaley saw a man's feet protruding
from the heap of smoldering corn and oats. The shoes were
not burned off the feet. He took hold of them and puUed
out the blackened remains of a man. It was Pat Hennessey.

No other bodies were in evidence. The party had only
an ax and their hands with which to dig a grave. They
did the best they could. Another eight miles brought them
to Ed Mosier's Buffalo Springs Ranch. Mosier was ac
quainted with what had happened at the Bull Foot sta
tion. He and his hired man, Bill Brooks, had driven to the
scene of the massacre early that morning, recovered the
bodies of Fant, Callaway, and Cook, and brought them to
the ranch and buried them. Asked why he and Brooks had

242 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

not brought in Pat Hennessey's body, he replied that
there wasn't time.

It was a strange answer, and it has never been ex
plained. Very likely Hosier had some reason for believing
that the Indians were returning, and that Brooks and he
didn't want to be caught there, and it is equally likely that
he said so. But it does not appear in the account Mallaley
gave Freeman, and the latter, who eagerly pursued such
details, as a rule, is singularly silent.

Mallaley made one statement, however, that gave rise
to most of the tales concerning the " mysterious " killing
of Pat Hennessey. He says he examined the body and
found only one bullet wound in the dead man's legs. That
being so, then Pat was neither dead nor seriously wounded
when he was tied to the wheel. Obviously, it was argued,
the Indians were torturing him to make him divulge some
secret and what more likely than that it concerned a
large sum of money for one of the cattle outfits that Pat
had concealed before the fight began?

Far removed from such fantasy is the fact that the
massacre at Bull Foot station played an important part
in triggering the all-out offensive the military launched
against the Cheyennes and Comanches. Two thousand
Cheyennes and seven hundred fifty Comanches had broken
away from their reservations and were declared "hos-
tiles." General Nelson A. Miles took to the field against
them. It was his plan to keep them on the run. For months
he chased them back and forth across the plains and the
prairies, giving them no rest, no time to hunt. The hostiles
were burdened with hundreds of ponies, so necessary to
them in their buffalo-hunting days. Tough and wiry as the
animals were, the incessant moving began to wear them
down. Before the summer was over, they were in worse
shape than their half-starved owners.

The first break came when three hundred Cheyennes

LEAK YEABS 243

rode in to surrender. They were in pitiful shape. Their
ponies were so weak and gaunt that General Miles ordered
most of them killed. The rest were sold. This was a policy
that was maintained as other bands returned to their
reservations. Killing off the great herds of buffaloes had
dealt the Plains tribes a staggering blow. It was now
Mile's plan to crush them completely by putting them
afoot. He supplied them with sheep and tried to interest
them in tilling the soil. It proved to be far from a success
ful experiment. But any threat of another major Indian
uprising was extinguished. (The great effort of Dull
Knife and the Northern Cheyennes to fight their way back
to their homeland in the north was not an uprising.)

The town of Hennessey, Oklahoma, named in his honor,
marks the spot where Pat was killed. A monument of
native rock, built in the shape of a lighthouse, stands
above his grave.

Between the first week in May and September 5 no rain
fell in Caldwell that year. "The ground became hard and
dry," says Freeman, "and the heat of the sun's rays
parched and dried up the grass and herbage. The streams
and water courses were almost devoid of water. In some
of the streams the water had entirely dried up and the
cattle were driven for miles in order that they might find
a pool in which to quench their thirst.

"The corn that had looked so promising in the spring,
had withered and died. The clouds were daily watched by
the people, hoping to save the remaining crops, which up
to this time continued to hold their verdure. On August 1
the sun was darkened by clouds of grasshoppers, which
came from the Rocky Mountain region, miles in width and
a score of miles long. The greater part of these pests
passed on, but the small portion that did alight, almost
covered the earth, in some places making drifts two to
four inches deep. Then the remaining vegetation disap-

244 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

peared, and every green thing shared the same fate. ' ' 5

Few places in the state were as hard hit as Caldwell.
It was no longer a buffalo hunters' town, it picked up
what it could from the passing Texas cattle trade, but it
was its farmers, poor as they were, who were its economic
life. There was great distress. When the rains came,
they were too late to save anything. Caldwell had to join
in the appeals for outside aid. An epidemic of the ague
(chills and fever) followed. Few escaped it, and it was
generally believed to be a pestilence brought on by the
grasshoppers. Whiskey was the universal remedy. Pleas
ant as that was, young and old looked forward to the clear,
cold days of winter.

Other blows were in store for Caldwell before its boom
days arrived. In '76 the Chisholm Trail was virtually
abandoned. It was the town's only real artery of trade,
and of necessity, even in the darkest days, Caldwell held
to the belief that the old trail would come back.

The Kansas State Guide says: "Chisholm Street,. the
first east of Main, is believed to have been a section of
the Chisholm Trail." There would seem to be no reason
for casting doubt on its origin. It is a narrow street
today, down the hill a block from Caldwell 's main busi
ness thoroughfare, in the direction of the Rock Island
depot. In the early days, before the Longhorns were de-
toured around town, at the Last Chance saloon, Chis
holm Street was a segment of the old trail.

The only justification for including Sam Bass, the out
law "who came from Indiana," in this narrative, is a
very shadowy connection with Caldwell. The tale cannot
be substantiated; but, unlike stories of its kind, it does
not fall apart when logic is applied to it.

Eamon F. Adams, that excellent historian, says, in his
introduction to the reprint edition of Charles L. Martin's
A Sketch of Sam Bass f the Bandit, that he has in his per-

LEAST YEARS 24:5

sonal library approximately two hundred books that deal
with Sam Bass or devote some space to him. The first
four or five that were published seem to exhaust the
available material and the ones that followed were
largely a rehash of what had gone before.

Sam Bass, the Denton County, Texas, outlaw, wasn't
a killer, not even a first-class gun fighter; as an outlaw,
he was a third-rater. But someone wrote a song about
him, popular with cowboys for fifty years, and it made
him famous. "It is well-known," says Adams, "that Sam
Bass was a hail-fellow-well-met, never vicious, a lover
of good horses, true to his friends, and generous with his
money." 6 In other words, a typical cowboy of his day,
who * * went wrong. ' ?

It has often been told how he and Joel Collins, in
August of 1876, on credit, supplemented by what little
money they had, put together a herd of five hundred beef
cattle that were to be driven to the Kansas market, the
money received lor them to be brought back to Texas and
divided by arrangement' with the stockmen who had sup
plied the steers. When Sam Bass and Collins drove up
the Jones and Plumrner Trail with the herd, Jack Davis
went with them. Many writers agree that the cattle were
sold "in western Kansas/'

Dodge City was the big thing in western Kansas at the
time, so it seems safe to presume that it was there that
the beeves were sold. Dodge was gathering speed as a rip-
roaring cow town, and the pleasures it offered were made
to order for such as Sam Bass and his companions. They
drank and gambled until they had dipped so deeply into
the eight thousand dollars, which didn't belong to them,
that they gave up any thought of returning to Texas
until they had recouped the money they had lost. Dead-
wood and the Black Hills gold excitement seemed to offer
a chance for making a big stake. But luck continued to

246 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

run against them in Deadwood. When they were broke,
they turned to robbery. Joel Collins, the brains of the out
fit, recruited several kindred souls and formed the Collins
gang.

Holding up stagecoaches and chance wayfarers did not
pay off. A driver was killed in an attempted robbery.
They were suspected and left Deadwood for Nebraska.
They struck pay dirt when they turned to train robbery.
At Bigspring Station (incorrectly written Big Springs),
a few miles west of Ogallala, they stopped a Union
Pacific express and made off with sixty thousand dollars
in gold coin.

A few days after the robbery the gang split up. As
sorted lawmen and the military were out everywhere
looking for them, as news of the holdup was flashed over
Nebraska and Kansas by telegraph. Collins and Bill
Heif ridge, another member of the gang, ran into Sheriff
Bardsley, of Ellis County, Kansas, and a posse at Buffalo
Station, sixty miles west of Hays City, and were killed
while resisting arrest. The identity of the gang was now
known.

In the meantime Bass and Davis, on their way back to
Denton County, Texas, where Sam intended to dazzle his
friends with his wealth, rode through Nebraska un
molested. On reaching Kansas they disposed of their
horses for an old buggy and a work horse. Posing as two
busted homesteaders going back to eastern Kansas, they
continued on their way, avoiding the settlements and un
aware of the state-wide search being made for them.

The story has often been told of how they drove up
to an unidentified creek to stay the night and found a
score of soldiers camped there. Sam, with Ms big laugh
and guileless smile, answered the officer's questions. No,
they hadn't seen any train robbers named Bass and Davis.

LEAH YEAES 247

Since leaving Lamed that morning they had not spoken
to anyone.

As they sat there talking to the lieutenant, Cunningham
says their feet rested on two denim bags on the floor
boards of the old buggy, in each of which was ten thou
sand dollars in gold. With far more cunning than he
usually exhibited Sam asked permission to camp with the
troops and made such a good impression that he was
loaned a frying pan and coffeepot in which to cook supper
for himself and Davis,

If you look at the map you will see that the shortest,
best, and possibly the safest way for them to reach Denton
County was to use the now fairly deserted Chisholm
Trail. Cunningham says: ". . . they went down through
the Nations and crossed the Bed at Eed River station/' 7

That being true, they could have reached the old trail
by giving Wichita a wide berth and by by-passing
Wellington. Caldwell would have been their last op
portunity to buy supplies for the long drive through the
Territory. Without a railroad and telegraphic communica
tion the town would have appeared safe to them. Whether
they were the two men who drove into Caldwell in an
old buggy, early in October, and spent the day drinking,
gambling, and laying in supplies, will never be known.
But when in the spring of '78 pictures and descriptions
of Sam Bass began to appear in Texas newspapers, with
accounts of the robberies being committed by the Sam
Bass gang, you could have got a bet in Caldwell that one
of the two men who had stopped there the past October
the stockily built one with the black mustache and the
hearty laugh and spent his money so freely was none
other than Sam Bass.

Texas Rangers brought Bass's ill-starred career to a
gory end at Round Rock, Denton County, on the tenth of
July, 1878. Though he knew he was dying, he refused to

248 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

make a confession, preferring to take his secrets to the
grave. "No, I won't tell," he told Major Jones of the
Bangers. "It's against my profession to blow on my
pals. If a man knows anything, he ought to die with it in
him. I am going to hell anyhow."
It was one of Sam Bass's best moments.

CHAPTER

CAUDWELL COMES OF AOE

8N THE spring of '79, the Cowley,
Sumner and Fort Smith Eailroad
Company, which had existed only on
paper for some years, suddenly brushed the gathering
dust off its charter and set the dirt flying as it struck
south from Wichita for Wellington, about halfway to
Caldwell. Doubts that it would ever get anywhere were
expressed until a little peeking behind the curtain re
vealed that the Cowley, Simmer and Fort Smith was
owned lock, stock, and barrel by the Santa Fe.

Until it was actually in Wellington, the company in
sisted that the county seat of Sumner County was as far
as it was going for the present. Why so much secrecy was
employed was solely a matter of not readily understand
able railroad financing. When the Cowley, Sumner and
Fort Smith was completed to Wellington, the dummy
company then built on to Caldwell, and when that opera
tion was finished, it went out of business and the parent
Santa Fe emerged as sole owner of the branch line from
Wichita to the border, as well as the branch from Mulvane
to Arkansas City.

Caldwell did not wait for the rails to arrive before
it began to boom. (It was June 13, 1880, before it saw

249

250 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

its first train.) Forgotten were the grasshoppers, the
hard times, and the stillness that had settled on the
Chisholm Trail. The price of building lots rose skyward
as the town mushroomed. Of the hundreds who rushed
in most of them came from "Wichita, good men and had,
and along with them the offscourings of Delano.

The building activity that took place rivaled the early
years in Wichita. Chisholm Street lost its importance
and Main Street became the principal business street. It
was clogged with wagons hauling lumber and bricks.
Major Oatman began work on the Leland still Cald-
well's leading hotel. Unlike the cow towns that blossomed
overnight and faded almost as quickly, their business
street lined with flimsily built shacks, Caldwell began to
have a look of permanency. Most of the buildings that
were put up were built of brick and stone. They were
meant to last. They are still there today.

G-eorge and notorious Mag Woods, husband and wife,
and the vicious successors to Rowdy Joe and Kate Lowe,
came down from Delano and built a two-story saloon,
dance-hall, and bagnio on the corner of what is North
Chisholm Street and East Avenue A. Appropriately,
they named it the Bed Light, "Oh, the deeds of crime
which have been committed within its walls of iniquity
and shame," Freeman exclaims. "Many are the crimes
and murders which have been caused by its immoral and
vile influence." 1 For once he was not overstating the
ease. In a wide-open town there were many places offer
ing the same entertainment that G-eorge and Mag Woods
provided, but the depravity and violence of the Bed
Light, its many killings, including the shooting of two
city marshals, were such that the lesser deadfalls at
tracted little public attention.

Several prominent Wichita saloonkeepers closed up
shop and shipped their fixtures to the Border Queen.

CALDWELL COMES OF AGE 251

Those steely-eyed birds of passage, the professional
gamblers, began to move in too, thus attesting their faith
in the future prosperity of Caldwell. Their optimism and
the confidence with which the town was going ahead were
founded on the belief that the Santa Fe's purpose in
building down to the state line was to bring the Long-
horn herds back to the Chisholm Trail byi providing a
shipping point uncluttered with barbed wire and where
any Kansas embargo against Texas cattle entering the
state could not apply. This was sound reasoning and the
coming years were to prove it. Even after the state-wide
embargo act of 1884 was passed, cattle continued to be
shipped from the stockyards at the end of the switch line
south of Caldwell.

During the afternoon of July 18, George Wood and
Jake Adams, two cowboys employed by a cattle outfit
in the Strip, rode into town, left their horses at the hitch-
rack in front of Jim Moreland's saloon, and went inside.
An hour later, crazy drunk, they got on their horses and
rode up and down Main Street, firing their revolvers,
screeching the Texas yell, and buffaloing Caldwell until
they wearied of their fun, when they returned to More-
land's saloon and continued drinking.

CaldwelPs police force consisted of a constable em
ployed by the township. He was urged to exert his au
thority and arrest the two cowboys, but he was too badly
frightened to proceed without help. In the saloons he
enlisted the support of half a dozen men. Two of the six,
George Flat and John Wilson, were first-class trouble
makers in their own right and rated high among the
toughs and desperadoes who had drifted into Caldwell.
By his own admission George Flat had killed seven men.
Wilson was also reputed to be a good man with a six-gun.
The two of them took it on themselves to take Wood and
Adams into camp.

252 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

They went to the saloon and on looking in saw the two
men talking to Jim Moreland, the proprietor. Wilson then
went around to the back door and stationed himself
there j Flat walked up to the bar and ordered a drink.
As he waited for Moreland to pour it, he placed his pistol
on the bar. Jake Adams took it as a declaration of war.
He whipped up his six-gun and, holding the muzzle within
a few inches of Flat's face, told him to pick up his
revolver and back out. Flat backed all the way to the
door, with the cowboy crowding him. As they reached
the street, Flat pumped two shots into him. Adams'
partner Wood leaped out and tried to reach his horse. A
blast from Flat's six-gun sent him rolling across the side
walk into the street. Jake Adams 1 turned back into the
saloon and ran to the rear door, where he fell dying. 2

Either unnerved by the double killing or fearful of
reprisals by friends of the dead men. Flat ran out into
the middle of the street and refused to let anyone come
near him. He calmed down after being assured that as
the constable's assistant he was justified in what he had
done and that nothing would come of it. He was persuaded
to step inside for a drink. He at once picked a quarrel
with Moreland, accusing him of instigating the trouble
and threatening to kill him. He was led away, but he
continued to drink, and later in the afternoon he
threatened a barber who had expressed sympathy for
the murdered men.

There were a number of cowboys in town. They felt
as the barber did. The situation began to look ugly until
Flat was put to bed and locked up. Having revealed him
self as a vicious weakling, the town should have realized
what it could expect from him, and yet, a few months
later, he was appointed city marshal. He didn't last long.
With one exception, that could be said of his successors
for they came and went in bewildering frequency.

CALDWELL COMES OF AGE 253

Caldwell was incorporated as a city of the third class
on July 29, 1879. A town government was installed, money
voted for erection of a jail, and a police force established.
As further proof that Caldwell was on its way, its first
newspaper, the Weekly Eye Opener came off the press.

Expectations that the rails would be in Caldwell before
the first of the year faded as the weeks passed. The
Cowley, Sumner and Fort Smith had reached Welling
ton on September 30, but there work stopped. Months
passed before it was resumed. In the meantime the town's
disappointment was lessened by the knowledge that rail
road agents were contacting cattlemen in the Cherokee
country and Texas and making them inducements to
drive to Caldwell when the 1880 season opened.

Mike Meagher, four times chief of police in Wichita,
had followed the parade to Caldwell and opened a saloon
on Main Street. When the spring elections came along,
he was elected mayor. George Flat was fired as city
marshal. He had become unbearable with his drunken
ness and violent temper. Even his deputies were afraid of
him. Mike made short work of Flat, but he remained in
town, carrying a grudge against the mayor and Deputy
Marshal Frank Hunt. When he was in his cups, he ac
cused the mayor and his police of being out to "get" him.

With the coming of June, and Caldwell excitedly pre
paring to welcome the first train, now just a matter of a
few days away, Flat was shot down as he turned into
First Street, late at night, with his friend George Spears.
The two of them had left the Bed Light some time after
one o'clock in the morning. Flat was drunk and Spears
was taking him home. They hfid just turned off Main
Street when a fusillade of shots seven or eight in all-
greeted them from the shadows of a building across the
way. Flat was riddled with lead. Miraculously, Spears
was not struck.

254 WILD, WOOLLY AlfTD WICKED

Deputy Marshal Hunt led the investigation that fol
lowed, but he could not find any clue to the killer or
killers. Spears was questioned at length, but he could
not explain how he had escaped uninjured. The night was
black and he had not been able to recognize the men who
had done the shooting. He thought there were two men,
but he wasn't sure about it. In fact, he was so vague that
the story ran around town that he couldn't say anything
because he had been hired to lead Flat into an ambush.
Plat's cronies charged that the killing had been arranged
by the police.

It resulted in an official investigation. When no evi
dence against Hunt and his men could be produced, the
matter was dropped. It was the over-all opinion of Cald-
well that removing George Flat was good-riddance. Be
sides, it had something far more important on its mind
just then. It had waited month after month for the first
train and -here it was, on June 13. It was the biggest
day in the town's history until ten thousand boomers
crowded into Caldwell in 1893 to make the great "run"
into Oklahoma.

After all the maddening delays the Santa Fe no more
was heard of the Cowley, Sumner and Fort Smith was
suddenly in a lather to reach the border. A week later
the rails were at the state line and the shipping pens and
loading chutes were put together. The depot was only
half finished, but that was a small consequence; cattle
were going aboard the cars, and Caldwell was at last a
full-fledged, booming cow town. Throughout the summer
the loading went on, night and day. When an outfit got
finished at the shipping pens, it headed for town. It was
Abilene all over again. When the season ended, a re
spectable total of thirty thousand Longhorns had rolled
through Caldwell.

If you look at the map again you will see how the Texas

CALDWELL COMES OF AGE 255

cattle trade had become divided. Denison and the railroads
in eastern Texas were getting their share; Dodge; City
could claim whatever came up the Jones and Plummer
Trail and the new Western Trail. There was a wide gap
in between, standing like an open door to the heart of
the Texas ranges. With barriers of barbed wire and
embargoes removed, it could best be served by the old
trail. No town was ever to get it all again, as Abilene
once did, but the Chisholm Trail was definitely back in
business.

Caldwell did little to curb the violence and immorality
that soon made the town notorious. No newspaper article
about Caldwell was complete unless it contained the line,
"In Caldwell, you're lucky to be alive." If it had an
ordinance against carrying deadly weapons, it was not
enforced. Women were allowed in the saloons. It was a
common sight to see cowboys parading the street with
inmates of the Eed Light on their arm.

The front lower floor of the Eed Light was used as a
saloon; the dance floor was in the rear, and upstairs were
the rooms used by its female inmates. On the night of
October 11, Deputy Marshal Frank Hunt was seated at
an open window in the saloon if he was there on official
business, the nature of it was never disclosed listening
to the music and watching the dancers, when a gun roared
outside and he fell to the floor mortally wounded. He
died in agony several hours later.

Immediately it was put down as a revenge slaying for
the killing of George Flat. Hunt had been suspected of
arranging the ambush. Off his record Frank Hunt had
been a better-than-average peace officer. No evidence had
been produced showing that he had any connection with
the death of Flat, nor was any proof offered that his
own life had been snuffed out in reprisal. ' * It became just
another in Caldwell's list of unsolved crimes/' 8

256 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

Looking back, two decades later, the editor of the
Caldwell Advance was moved to say: "Caldwell, being
a border town, in common with other frontier towns,
has a past history a part of which she would rather for
get/' Surely '81 and '82 were the years he had in mind.
For ten months Newton had been the wildest of the cow
towns, but Caldwell put her in second place.

Mike Meagher refused to stand for re-election. Perhaps
he had a premonition of what was to come. When he
stepped down, Caldwell went from bad to worse. The
Texans, and the crooks and harlots who preyed on them,
had the run of the town. Abilene in its wildest days had
placed some restraint on its prostitutes. In Caldwell there
appeared to be none. Lewd women solicited on the streets.
When a drunken cowpuncher fell into their hands it was
common practice to lead him away and turn him over to
a male confederate to be tapped on the head and rolled
for whatever money he was carrying.

Attempts at law enforcement were largely a joke,
Caldwell couldn't find a man big enough for the job.
It was often said, and not altogether in jest, that the term
of office for a city marshal in Caldwell was two weeks
that if he wasn't killed he quit or was fired. But Caldwell
was growing, and many of the newcomers were respect
able, law-abiding men and women. A hard core of re
sistance to the way things were going began to take shape.

On the afternoon of August 18, 1881, a cowboy named
Charlie Davis quarreled with one of the girls in the Eed
Light. George Woods, the proprietor of the dive, inter
fered on behalf of the woman. Davis leveled his pistol at
Woods and killed him almost instantly. Beaching his
horse, the cowboy left town on the gallop and disappeared
into the Territory.

Mag woods offered a five-hundred-dollar reward for his
capture. A long search for him was made but he was never

CALDWELL COMES OF AGE 257

found. Mag had her husband interred in the city cemetery
and erected a handsome monument to his memory but
the Eed Light continued to function as the town's most
odious joint. For the first time a number of leading citi
zens publicly demanded that it be closed up and Mag
Woods and her retinue be driven out of CaldwelL Nothing
was done about it.

With the cattle trade over for the season and Caldwell
quieting down for the winter, Jim Sherman, alias Jim
Talbot, the Texas desperado rode into Caldwell with a
woman he claimed was his wife. He rented a furnished
house and the couple moved in. Within a week Talbot was
joined by six members of his gang. They spent most of
their time in the Eed Light or visiting other places of
amusement, accompanied by Mag Woods 's girls. Drunk
or sober, they went out of their way to show their con
tempt for the police, using coarse and obscene language
on the street in the hearing of respectable women, crowd
ing men off the sidewalk, and firing their pistols fre
quently in what appeared to be a studied attempt to cow
the town.

Mayor Hubble swore in six men to assist the police.
At the first sign of trouble they were to rush to the aid
of the marshal and his deputies and if it became necessary
to shoot, to shoot to kill. No one pretended to know why
Talbot and his gang had gathered in Caldwell, but the
explanations came thick and fast following the Woody
climax. That they meant to rob the Stock Exchange Bank
was a likely supposition. Mayor Hubble detailed two men
to guard it night and day.

Two of the desperadoes were arrested for disturbing
the peace. Talbot appeared and paid their fines. It seemed
to bring matters to a head in his mind. Next morjaing,
a few minutes after nine o'clock, he turned into Main
Street from his house, a single-action Colt in either hand

258 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

and the members of Ms gang trailing along after him. At
a nod from Talbot they walked out into the middle of the
street and began shooting. There was a general scurrying
to cover as windows were shattered and a hail of bullets
plowed into wooden doors and pinged off brick walls.

As yet there were no casualties. Talbot was overheard
to tell his men to go to the house and get their rifles. He
went with them. When they returned a few minutes later
they were armed with Winchesters. The intermission had
given the augmented police force and a number of armed
citizens time to take up positions of vantage. The battle
was joined. Men who took part in it stated that over a
hundred shots were fired. The shooting had been going
on for several minutes when Mike Meagher leaped across
the sidewalk in front of his saloon, a six-gun in his hand
and took dead aim on Talbot. Though he fired three or
four shots, unaccountably they went wide of their mark.
Talbot threw his rifle to his shoulder and shot him dead.

Participants said that as soon as he saw Meagher
crumple into the dust he told his men to get the horses.
They ran into the livery barn across from the Red Light.
George Spears, the man who was with Flat the night the
latter was ambushed, was seen untying a horse at the
hitch-rack. His actions were suspicious enough to give the
idea that he was either about to help the outlaws to escape
or meant to go with them. He was killed before he could
get the horse untied.

By the time Talbot and his men were mounted, City
Marshal Wilson, Deputy Marshal Fossett, two policemen,
and a score of citizens had the barn covered. Talbot and
five others burst through the open doors at a driving
gallop and got away. As they fled, one of their horses was
killed. The rider mounted behind another man and they
got out of town.

A mile south of Caldwell the gang met a farmer driving

CALDWELL COMES OF AGE 259

home. They relieved him of his horse and went on. They
had a start of several miles before a posse rode after them
in hot pursuit.

In the meantime the two members of the gang who
were cornered in the livery barn were taken into custody
and locked up. A telegram was dispatched to the sheriff
at Wellington. He hurried to Caldwell by special train,
accompanied by a score of armed men.

Talbot and his gang were driven to cover in an aban
doned dugout at the head of Deer Creek. Though they
were facing upwards of eighty men, they held them off
for the rest of the day. Sheriff Davis, overly cautious,
decided to wait for morning and daylight before attempt
ing to close in. When he did, he found the quarry had
fled. The grass in the canyon was three feet high. The
outlaws had crawled through it undetected. At a freight
er s' camp several miles distant, they commandeered the
horses and were not seen again.

Eewards were posted for the capture of Talbot. Posses
scoured Indian Territory for him. County officers were
dispatched to various points in Texas and Colorado on
information that a man answering Talbot 's description
was being helcL It never proved to be Talbot. He was
arrested in Mendocino County, California, in connection
with another crime in 1894 and returned to Sumner County
to stand trial for the killing of Mike Meagher, His first
trail ended in a hung jury. He was retried and acquitted. 4

Talbot returned to California. On the evening of the
last Tuesday in August 1896, he was returning to his
ranch several miles from the village of Covelo and was
within fifty feet of his gate when the blast of a shotgun,
fired at close range, struck him in the chest and neck,
severing the spinal cord and killing him instantly. News
of the slaying revived rumors in Caldwell that John
Meagher, Mike's twin brother, had followed Talbot to

260 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

California shortly after the latter ? s acquittal in Welling
ton. There appears to be little reason to believe that John
Meagher was involved. Talbot had killed a man in Men-
docino County and had a score of enemies, including the
man who had run off with his wife. The fact that the
authorities brought no one to trial for murdering him
would indicate that it was a local matter that no one cared
to investigate.

The shooting of Mike Meagher not only produced a
great amount of interesting speculation but raised some
questions that Talbot 's trial failed to answer, and which
persist to this day. If you care to take folklore for it,
there was a connection between the slayings of George
Flat, Deputy Marshal Hunt, and Meagher. The shadowy
figure of George Spears has to be considered, also it must
be remembered that Meagher, as mayor, was the official
head of the police. If the ambushing of George Flat was a
police trap, then Meagher, whether he had a part in it
or not, would have been held responsible by Flat's friends
and relatives. But what of Spears 's part in the ambush?
He had miraculously escaped being struck. For that reason
he had been suspected of having an understanding with
Deputy Marshal Hunt and his men. Had Spears subse
quently changed sides on learning that Flat was Jim
Talbot 's half brother, and to square him self with Talbot
had shot Hunt to death in the Bed Light? In the time
that Talbot was in Caldwell, Spears had been noticeably
friendly with him, which had led to his being killed in
the big fight with the embattled citizens.

It was pointed out and obviously it was true that
Talbot had not come to Caldwell to commit robbery. If
he was there to square accounts with Meagher for the
killing of a cousin in Wichita, some years past, would he
have found it necessary to bring his gang with him? That
was considered unlikely. Wasn't it far more plausible that

CALDWELL COMES OF AGE 261

Talbot had come to Caldwell to kill Meagher and wipe out
the whole police force, thereby making sure he got the
man, or men, who had slain his half brother?
The truth will never be known.

CHAPTER XXTV

THE END OF AN ERA

HIABLY in the spring of '82 George
J QL S. Brown was appointed city mar
lI shal. A greater mistake could not
have been made. He bore an excellent reputation, was
fairly well educated, and had a kindly, gentlemanly man
ner excellent traits in themselves but hardly the quali
fications necessary in a man whose job it was to ride herd
on a town as wild and woolly as Caldwell. Though he was
brave and courageous, he had no previous experience as a
peace officer and quickly proved himself completely un
fitted for his job.

His brief career as marshal of the town ended in
tragedy scarcely two months after he was appointed. On
the morning of June 22 two unidentified cowboys rode up
from the shipping pens and after stabling their horses in
the livery barn began making the rounds of the saloons.
They shot out a street light and otherwise made them
selves obnoxious as they headed for the Bed Light. A
group of businessmen stopped Marshal Brown in front
of the Leland and demanded that the police arrest the
two Texans before some innocent citizen was killed. Ap
parently not anticipating any trouble in taking the pair

262

THE EETD OF AST EBA 263

into custody, Brown entered the Red Light alone and was
told by Mag Woods that the men were upstairs-
One of the girls had seen the marshal coming. Surmising
his purpose, she warned the Texans. They waited for him
at the head of the stairs. There was a landing halfway up,
where the stairs turned, so that it was impossible for
Brown to see them until they were almost face to face.
When he attempted to take them into custody, they opened
fire on him. He rolled down the stairs to the landing, where
he died. The Texans got their horses and were away
before the town realized what had happened. An attempt
at pursuit was made, but the two men were gone.

Again the cry was raised that the Bed Light had to go.
Somehow Mag Woods managed to survive. It threatened
to become a political scandal. The City Council gave the
police department a shake-up. B. O. (Bat) Carr was ap
pointed marshal and Hendry Brown deputy marshal on
July 5 and ordered to clean up the town. Caldwell drew
a breath of relief, for in Bat Carr and Hendry Brown it
believed it had a pair of peace officers at last who could
do the job that had to be done.

The confidence expressed in the two men was born of
the fact that both were recognized "hard cases." Bat Carr
was a rough, tough barroom brawler, arrogant, quarrel
some, and merciless when he was using his fists or wield
ing a club. Hendry Brown was a colorless, stony-faced
gun fighter. He had ridden with Billy the Kid and taken
part in the big fight in Lincoln when McSween was killed
and his house burned. He had been with Billy in Tascosa,
out on the Canadian in the Texas Panhandle. They had
parted there and Brown had served a term as marshal of
Tascosa and lived to survive it which was BO mean ac
complishment, for no town was ever tougher.

They started out well. The number of arrests multi
plied. Carr got a dollar of every fine that was levied.

264 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

There was no more buffaloing of the town by drunken
cowboys. Those Texans who sought to relieve their
exuberance by emptying their pistols in the air, were
slammed into jail. When time hung heavy on the mar
shals' hands, an excuse could always be found for raiding
the Red Light. Pulling men and women out of Mag
Woods 's joint became a very profitable business.

It wasn't long before a marked coolness developed
between the marshal and his formidable assistant. The
latter had tabbed Bat Carr for what he really was a
bully and, at bottom, a weakling.

Hendry Brown left the police force for a short time in
October, the reason he gave being that he had heard where
some rustlers were located in the Strip and wanted to
get the reward money on them. Whatever his real pur
pose in leaving for the Strip and there are several tales
that may or may not have been fashioned out of hindsight
after Hendry Brown's violent end he was back in Cald-
well before the month was over and resumed his duties
as deputy city marshal. Brown now went out to get Carr 's
job and let him know it. Writing in the Caldwell Messen
ger, Chester C. Heizer quotes Joe Wiedeman, the old-time
cowboy and one of the few authentic voices left, to the
effect that Brown told Carr he wanted hi to resign, and
that when Carr refused, he (Hendry Brown) tore the
badge off the marshal's vest and told him to "git." Ac
cording to Wiedeman, Carr "got-" In December the City
Council appointed Brown marshal of the town.

Ben Wheeler had appeared in Caldwell. He was an old
friend of Hendry Brown. Future events were to prove
that they had much in common. Brown pulled some strings
and Wheeler was made deputy marshal.

Not long after, several cattlemen who made their head
quarters at the Southwestern Hotel were held up and re
lieved of sizable amounts of money. Not the faintest sus-

THE END OP AN ERA 265

picion that they were the holdup men fell on Brown and
Wheeler.

They made a great pair and Caldwell was being policed
as it had never been before. Mayor Colson and the City
Council publicly commended them. The good people of
the town who had prayed for law and order were satisfied
that they were getting it. Brown and Wheeler descended
on the Bed Light and hauled twenty men and women be
fore Police Court Judge Eeilley. According to Wiedeman,
Brown told the judge to fine everyone of the so-and-sos
twenty-five dollars. 1

It brought such an enthusiastic response from the good
people of the town that the City Council took a long-
overdue step and declared the Eed Light a nuisance and
closed it up. Mag and her girls left without waiting to
be run out. Freeman says they "left for the west." If by
"west" he meant Dodge City, he was mistaken. Mag
Woods 's name does not appear among the madames or
dance-hall operators in the Cowboy Capital.

Some idea of the regard in which the town held Hendry
Brown can be gained from the fact that a number of lead
ing citizens, through Mayor A. M. Colson, presented him
with a gold-plated and beautifully engraved Winchester
rifle, with a plate on the stock carrying this inscription:

"Presented to City Marshal
H. JV. Brown for valuable serv
ices rendered the citizens of
Caldwell, Kansas.
A. M. COLSOST, Mayor, Dec. 1882."

Incredibly, Caldwell went for months without another
shooting affray. It was not until May 13 that the first
killing of '83 occurred. A Pawnee Indian by the name of
Spotted Horse and his squaw drove into town and camped
on a vacant lot. In the morning the Indians entered sev-

266 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

eral homes and demanded food. In one house Spotted
Horse threatened a woman and drew a revolver on her
husband. Neighbors stepped in and stopped the argu
ment. The Indians came back into the business district
and entered the kitchen of the Long Branch restaurant
from the alley and helped themselves to breakfast. The
squaw then went back to the wagon ; Spotted Horse walked
into the grocery store next door and was there when
Marshal Brown came looking for him. There are two
versions to what followed. One has it that the Indian
pulled out his revolver again and that in self-defense the
officer shot him dead. That was the way the coroner's jury
saw it, declaring the killing justified. The other tale has
it that Brown wasted no words on Spotted Horse, but on
entering the store, walked up to him and, shoving his
pistol against the Indian's head, squeezed the trigger.

It didn't matter much; a truculent Indian didn't have
any rights.

Though few realized it, Caldwell reached the peak of
its importance as a Texas cattle market that year. More
miles of railroad were being built in Texas than in any
other Western state, and every mile of track that was laid
diminished the need for driving a beef herd to Kansas.

The year passed into history. If there were fewer kill
ings, there were more robberies, which the police lamented
but never could find evidence sufficient to warrant an
arrest. Later, Caldwell was to understand why.

In April of '84, employing the same excuse he had used
in '82 for absenting himself from town, Hendry Brown,
with Wheeler, asked permission from Mayor Colson to
ride the Strip to pick up a wanted man on whom there was
a heavy reward. In the first instance it was rustlers Brown
was going to round up ; this time it was a murderer. The
permission was granted and, after leaving Caldwell,
Brown and Wheeler were joined (by prearrangement)

THE EKD OP AST EBA 267

by John Wesley and Billy Smith, both hard cases, which
made them four of a kind.

Their destination was Medicine Lodge, the county seat
of Barber County, fifty miles to the west. It had no rail
road and only one institution of which it was proud, the
Medicine Valley Bank. On the morning of April 30, Brown
and his companions rode into town in a driving rain, after
the Medicine Valley opened for business, and left their
horses at a shed in the rear. When they walked into the
bank, Wylie Payne, the president, was seated at his desk
and George Geppert, the cashier, was busy behind the
banking counter. Instead of acquiescing to the command to
open the safe, Geppert reached for a gun. He was shot
down and killed. Payne ran up and he went to the floor,
mortally wounded. The would-be robbers ran to their
horses and fled to the south, with a posse hurriedly organ
ized by Barney O'Connor, a local cattleman, in pursuit.

The posse surrounded the bandits in a narrow canyon
in the Gyp Hills southwest of town. Brown and the others,
seeing that they were trapped, walked out with their hands
in the air. They were brought back to town and placed
in a small wooden building that was used as a jail. Sheriff,
C. F. Eigg had just ridden in from his ranch. He took
charge of the prisoners and deputized a number of men
to guard them. A crowd had gathered, and from its tone
it was evident that " Judge Lynch " was riding hard for
Medicine Lodge.

The tenseness that gripped the town grew as the after
noon faded and the word from Payne 's bedside came that
he was dying. A signal was agreed on by grim-faced citi
zens. When a shot was fired at nine that evening, several
hundred men headed for the jail. Sheriff Eigg was deter
mined not to let the mob have the prisoners, but he and
his deputies were disarmed and the jail door opened.
Brown made a run for it. He got only a few feet before

268 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

he fell, riddled with buckshot. Wheeler, Smith, and "Wes
ley tried to make a break. All three were wounded,
Wheeler seriously.

They were marched to an elm tree in the eastern sec
tion of town. Wheeler begged for mercy. He got none.
All three were left dangling in the air. "They came to
their death/' according to the report of the coroner 's
jury, "by hanging at the hands of a mob, composed of
persons unknown/'

The members of the jury were undoubtedly among the
persons who were "unknown."

When the news reached Caldwell, the town was stunned.
The respected city marshal and the almost equally popu
lar deputy marshal, revealed as bank robbers and wanton
killers of innocent men ! One wonders what Mayor Colson,
who had always sung their praises, had to say.

Caldwell overcame its chagrin. It had its new Opera
House, the finest in the state, to point to with pride, and
its first daily newspaper, the Daily Standard. The Chi
cago, Rock Island and Pacific Bailroad's main line south
into the heart of Texas was under construction, parallel
ing the Santa Fe tracks all the way down from Welling
ton. Caldwell rejoiced at the prospect of having two rail
roads. Only the f arsighted saw that the Rock Island would
drive another nail in the coffin of the Texas cattle trade.

Major Gordon Lillie, known later the country over as
Pawnee Bill, began to be seen in Caldwell again. He had
grown up in Sumner County and one of his first jobs was
working as a waiter in a Caldwell restaurant. It was while
he was so employed that he received a letter offering him
the job of teaching school on the Pawnee Reservation. He
accepted and it was the beginning of his friendly interest
in the Pawnees that lasted for the rest of his lifetime.

Lillie he was still in his early twenties learned to
speak the Pawnee language fluently. He was made a mem-

THE END OF AN ERA 269

ber of the Pawnee Nation and for a white man to become
a blood brother of an Indian meant something in those
days and not the shallow ceremony it is today, when a
headdress, turned out by the gross by some dealer in
Indian goods, is clapped on the head of every visiting
politician and celebrity.

He always professed not to know how the name Pawnee
Bill started. "It just grew on me/' he said. He liked the
sound of it, and he made it famous. He began wearing
fringed buckskins and let his hair grow long that is how
thousands of Americans still remember him.

His connection with Buffalo Bill Cody began when the
latter sought his help in getting a troupe of Indians to
be featured in his Wild West show. Lillie was working
for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and knew it was against
regulations to take Indians off their reservation for com
mercial purposes, but he rounded up a score of colorful
Pawnees and joined the show with them as interpreter,
and later as a performer. After he and Cody fell out, he
had his own show. 2

Pawnee Bill has a better claim to fame than his career
as a successful showman. When Captain Payne died (or
was murdered) the boomer movement collapsed for a
time. Pawnee Bill was well acquainted with Captain Payne
and was a strong advocate of the movement to open the
unassigned lands of the Territory to settlement. He had
great personal charm, was a man filled with vigor, an
excellent speaker, and a fighter.

He was just the leader the drooping boomer movement
needed to revivify it. Payne's old boomers and new con
verts by the hundred rallied to him. The pressure of pub
lic opinion that he put on Congress and his threats to
invade the Territory despite the presence of troops forced
the opening of Old Oklahoma. (Not to be confused with
the state of Oklahoma.) Hundreds of boomers gathered

270 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

in Caldwell, Arkansas City, and Hunnewell and crossed
the Strip to the north line of the land that was to be
opened. Major Lillie led them and by nightfall of April

16 saw Old Oklahoma settled. Captain Payne's dream
and his own partly realized, he returned to Kansas and
immediately renewed the fight for the opening of the
Cherokee Strip. It took years, but success came on Sep
tember 16, 1893, with the greatest run for free land in
history.

Of the forty thousand who made the "run," ten thou
sand made it from Caldwell. Wells ran dry and drinking
water had to be brought in from Wellington. A sandwich
cost a dollar. The tide of humanity that swept over the
town turned it into a seething madhouse for a few days.
Then suddenly the thousands were gone. With them went
several hundred Caldwellites. Those who were fortunate
enough to stake a claim did not return. And yet the Weekly
News, in its edition of September 21, declared, optimistic-
cally: "Caldwell is one of the most fortunate towns on
the line of the Strip opening. It is already a busy com
mercial center, has a splendid trade, but will double it ...
by the opening of the territory below us. Now is a grand
opportunity spread out before our people, and especially
our businessmen. There will be no rival town nearer than

17 miles and a vast trade territory is ours to reap." 8
That dream was not realized. New towns sprang up

overnight in the Strip and it soon became sufficient unto
itself.

An amendment to the state constitution prohibiting the
sale of intoxicating beverages had been a burning ques
tion in Kansas for a decade and more. In 1879 the drys
succeeded in getting such an amendment passed by both
houses of the legislature. This was the so-called Murray
Law. It was ratified in the general election of 1880, and
was signed into law by Governor St. John in 1881. "Tern-

THE END OF AN ERA 271

perance organizations hailed it as the opening wedge for
a general cleaning up of the boisterous, wide-open 'cow
towns 5 . . . temperance was only one of the evils against
which the crusade was waged. ' ' 4

No adequate machinery existed for enforcing the
amendment. Instead of doing away with recognized evils,
it created evils of its own, with graft and special privi
lege turning enforcement into a farce. Once again Kansas
stood divided. The bitter partisan strife over the slavery
question, which had left the state torn and bleeding,
threatened to be repeated in the battle for and against
Demon Kum. In the eastern counties the saloons were put
out of business, but out on the plains, where personal
liberty was regarded as the most precious of man's in
alienable rights, little attention was paid to the Murray
Law.

Cald weirs saloons did not close. There were raids,
saloon men were arrested and fined, but they continued
to keep their doors open. Their defiance of the prohibition
amendment was tinged with a peculiarly personal bitter
ness, for John A. Murray, its author, hailed from Sumiier
County and had served as county prosecutor.

Enos Blair had come to Caldwell in 1872 and over the
years had been one of the leaders in the movement to bring
law and order to the town. He was a whiskey hater and,
to further the cause of the drys, he became the publisher
of the weekly Free Press. A fearless man, he devoted most
of his columns to bitterly attacking the saloons, the gam
blers, and prostitution. He was warned to desist. When
he refused to take heed, his press was destroyed, his
home burned, and he was forced to leave town.

A few nights later four men went to the home of Frank
Noyse, a saloonkeeper, and informed him that they had a
warrant for his arrest. He accepted their word that it was
for violating the Murray Law, He left with them and his

272 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

wife thought that he was being taken to Wellington. In
the morning he was found hanging from the crossbeam
over the gate of the stock pens in the Santa Fe yards.
There was no doubt that the lynching was the work of
prohibitionists, for a placard bearing the names of other
saloon men marked for destruction was pinned to his
shirt.

Writing in the Caldwell Messenger, Judge John
Ryland, speaking of his grandfather, Enos Blair, says:
"His house was burned by Frank Noyse, but I conclude
that someone besides Noyse was the mastermind. Senti
ment by the law abiding element began to get so strong
that someone had to be hung, so Frank Noyse was the
goat" 5

Nothing in CaldwelPs violent past had split the town
into factions as did the lynching of Noyse. Personally, he
meant very little, but he was made the symbol of the
lengths to which the prohibitionists were prepared to go
in their pseudo-religious fanaticism. At a mass meeting a
reward of four thousand dollars was subscribed for in
formation leading to the arrest and conviction of his
murderers. No one ever stepped forward to collect it.

More armed men walked the streets of Caldwell than
at any other time in its history. Though the town lived for
months on top of a powder magazine that threatened to
explode at any minute, the explosion never occurred. As a
matter of fact, Caldwell was being shamed out of its
wildness and getting ready to settle down. The price of
wheat was becoming more important than the price of
Texas beef.

CHAPTER XXV

DODGE, LAST OF THE COW TOWNS

8T IS impossible to tell the story of
Dodge City without finding the ghostly
figure of the mythical Wyatt Earp at
one's elbow. Beyond him can be discerned the real Earp,
also named Wyatt, and one bears little resemblance to
the other. If this narrative dwells overly long on Wyatt
Earp it is not from choice. The Earp legend was born in
Ellsworth, but it was in Dodge that it first came to flower,
and since we are not concerned with the Tombstone years,
its relation to the cow town history of Kansas becomes
important.

Earp says that he arrived in Dodge City on May 17,
1876. This was five days before the Police Commission
of Wichita held up his scrip and stated that the vagrancy
act be enforced against the "2 Earps." Maybe Wyatt and
his brother Jim anticipated what was about to happen and
didn't wait for the ax to fall. He doesn't say whether he
arrived in Dodge alone or in company with his brother.
As for being the seventeenth, his word for it will have
to be taken, Dodge City newspapers not finding his coin
ing worthy of comment. Nor can it be said to the day when
Earp was appointed assistant marshal of Dodge City*

Whether he served two hitches or three as assistant

273

274 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

marshal of Dodge is in dispute. Stanley Vestal, a careful
researcher, spells it out this way in his informative Dodge
City: Queen of Cow Towns:

"May to September 9th, 1876

July 6th to November, 1877

May 12th., 1878 to September 8th., 1879." *

This conforms with dates Earp himself gives and is
bolstered by items appearing in the Dodge City Times,
the Dodge City Globe, and the Ford County Globe. Fur
ther, it agrees with the accepted fact that Wyatt and
Morgan Earp were in Deadwood from October 1876 to
June 1877. When he returned to Dodge on July 5, 1877,
it was again as assistant marshal, and it was in that
capacity he served from ? 78 to '79. He was never marshal
of Dodge City.

Of his first appointment he has this to say: "Hoover
[George Hoover, the mayor] told me that for political
reasons he wanted Deger [Larry Deger, the marshal] to
complete his year in office. He would pay me more money
as chief deputy than Deger was drawing. I would have
power to hire and fire deputies, could follow my own ideas
about my job and be marshal in all but name. The mar
shal's pay was $100 a month, but Mayor Hoover said they
would pay me $250 a month, plus $2.50 for every arrest
made. Brown [John Brown] and Mason [Joseph Mason]
were discharged from the force and I was to appoint
three new deputies at wages of $75 a month each, and
make my own arrangements with them about the
bonus. " 2

This, Earp says, was his introduction to Dodge City.
If it sounds incredible and it is it must be remembered
that this was not the arrival of the Wichita policeman
with his undistinguished service, and who, to put it charit
ably, had left there under a cloud : it was the coming of

DODGE, LAST OF THE COW TOWNS 275

the legendary Earp, the greatest of frontier marshals,
who had "established for all time his pre-eminence among
gun-fighters of the West" in absentia that afternoon
in Ellsworth.

When measured against the available facts, Earp's
story of how he was put in command of Dodge City's police
force falls flat on its face. Dodge had been incorporated
as a city of the third class in December 1875. A temporary
town government had been set up, with P. L. Beatty, half
owner with Jim "Dog" Kelley of the Alhambra saloon,
acting as mayor until an election could be held. Ordi
nances were promulgated having to do with the mainte
nance of law and order, among them one making it
unlawful to carry deadly weapons in that part of the town
north of the Santa Fe railroad tracks.

It was on the promise of adherence to these ordinances,
and the assurance that they would be voted into law as
soon as the first town government was seated, that George
Hoover was elected mayor without opposition, Beatty
having declined to run. George Hoover and his half
brother, Jack McDonald, had come down from Hays City
with A. B. Webster, "Dog" KeUey, Larry Deger, and
other saloonkeepers and opened barrooms in Dodge. Deger
had not made a go of it; Hoover had: The latter was
under no obligation, political or otherwise, to appoint
him city marshal. And yet he did, though he could have
had his pick of Bat, Ed, and Jim Masterson, Billy Tilgh-
man, the Sughrue brothers, Neal Brown (who was part
Cherokee), a gun fighter with a reputation, Charley Bas-
sett, Tom Nixon, mysterious Dave Mather, and a dozen
others ; they were all there.

There must have been a reason. Larry Deger, for all
of his Gargantuan size, was something more than the
town's "fat boy," which Earp makes him out to be. He
rated among the most popular men in Dodge. That a man

276 WEUD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

of Hoover's proven caliber would have gone behind
Deger '& back and sold him out only some thirty days after
he had been appointed is utterly absurd. It is equally
preposterous to assert that Larry Deger would have
submitted to the indignity of having his deputies, Henry
Brown and Joe Mason, dismissed and authority given to
Assistant Marshal Earp to name his own deputies. Had
there been anything to it, Deger would have ripped off
his badge and tossed it in Hoover's face, and the latter
would have admired him for doing so.

It seems to have been a habit with Earp to claim that
he was paid several times as much as he actually received
for his services. He did it in Wichita. He does even better
by himself when he states that Dodge City paid him $250
a month, plus a bonus of $2.50 for every arrest. On
August 6, 1878 he was an established figure in Dodge
by then and running things as he pleased, if we care to
take his word for it a regular meeting of the City Coun
cil reveals that among the bills approved were the fol
lowing:

Charles E. Bassett, salary as Marshal $100.00
Wyatt Earp, salary as Assis't. Marshal 75.00
John Brown, salary as policeman 75.00

James Masterson, salary as policeman 75.00

The fee paid the members of the police force per
arrest is given as $2.00, not the $2.50 that Earp claims.
But that must have been small change in his eyes, for
he states that when Dog Kelley, who had succeeded
Hoover as mayor, wired him at Cheyenne in '77, urging
him to hurry back to Dodge and resume his duties of
marshal (sic), it was "at an increase of a $100 a month in
wages over his pay of the preceding summer."

The docket of the police court shows that from July

DODGE, LAST OF THE COW TOWNS 277

5, 1878, to August 5, 1879, a period of thirteen months,
Wyatt Earp arrested or filed complaints against thirty-
five persons. The total number of arrests by all officers
recorded for 1878 amounts to sixty-four that figures
out at barely more than five arrests a month. The total
number of arrests made in 1879, according to Police
Judge Marshall's docket, was twenty-nine. And 78-79
were Dodge's big years as Queen of the Cow Towns!
One wonders just when it was that Assistant Marshal
Earp ran up the grand total of three hundred arrests
that he claims, with only one man killed, 3

The above figures lead to one of two conclusions:
either Dodge was not so tough and lawless as a score of
writers have led us to believe, or the Earps and the
Mastersons had tamed it out of all recognition. If figures
were available for the years prior to their appointment
to the police department, it would provide a yardstick
by which their accomplishments could be fairly meas
ured. As it is, it depends on which writer you are reading.
But this much can be said : as Kansas peace officers went,
Wyatt Earp, Bat Master son, and Bat's brother Jim, were
above average.

Wyatt would have us believe that when he became
assistant marshal he appointed Jim Masterson a deputy,
took Joe Mason back, and when Bat Masterson came up
from Sweetwater, Texas (changed later to Mobeetie),
took him on as a third man all of this without consult
ing Deger, who was, in his words, "just a figurehead as
Marshal."

He speaks of the laxness with which Deger had run the
town, of the special privileges wealthy Texan owners
enjoyed. According to him, he and his hand-picked
deputies stopped all that and he began his highly pub
licized career of cleaning up Dodge City. Just how Larry
Deger can be held responsible for the lawlessness of the

278 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

town, when, to quote Earp, he became a " figurehead " in
May, before the Texas cattle trade of 76 opened up, is
difficult to understand.

When he states that 76 was Dodge's first year as a
booming cow town, he makes an inexcusable blunder. If
75 didn't establish Dodge as the Cowboy Capital, it took
a tremendous step in that direction, shipping some
180,000 Longhorns, and it brought the number of men
laid to rest in the yellow clay of Boot Hill to twenty-two,
or twenty-seven both figures are given not ^ all of
whom necessarily were buried with their footwear on, for
Boot Hill was not reserved exclusively for those who
died a violent death.

In its early days Dodge had no other cemetery. Many
of the victims of the recurring epidemics of smallpox
and cholera were buried there. A man had to be a person
of some means to have his body taken out to Fort Dodge
and interred in the cemetery at the post.

Legend has it that two cowboys, camped on the hill,
engaged in a gun fight. One of them was killed. The
murderer fled. The dead man, unknown and friendless,
was wrapped in his blankets and buried where he fell,
with his boots on, and Boot Hill was born. As the number
of graves increased, they were dug haphazardly, some
on the slope and others on the crest of the MIL In 1879,
when Dodge City leveled part of Boot Hill to erect a
school on the site, the bodies were dug up and moved to
the new Prairie Grove Cemetery, north of town, and
reburied side by side in four rows. There was one ex
ception Alice Chambers, a dance-hall girl, and the last
person known to have been buried on Boot Hill, was
placed in a grave apart from the others. The removal dis
closed that very few had been put into the ground in
their blankets. In many instances the crude pine coffins
were remarkably well preserved*

DODGE, LAST OF THE COW TOWtfS 279

In 1927 the city razed the school and after some more
excavating, which unearthed more bodies, erected its
modern city hall, which also houses its police and fire
departments.

The name "Boot Hill" was widely pirated by other
frontier towns, but the original Boot Hill, within sound
of the hilarity of old Front Street, is in Dodge City.

If Dodge was just coming into its own as the last
of the major cow towns of Kansas, it was old in other
ways. To offer protection against the Plains Indians,
the War Department established a fort on the Arkansas
Kiver at the mouth of Mulberry Creek in 1864. This
junction of the north-south trail into Texas, the route
down the valley of the Arkansas and the Santa Fe Trail,
had been the scene of numerous attacks on wagon trains.
The new fort was named for General Grenville M. Dodge.
Its first commandant was Colonel (then Major) Richard
Irving Dodge, his nephew. With the passing years it had
other commandants whose names are famous Custer,
Sheridan, Miles, Hancock.

In 1871 a sod house, the first building on what became
the townsite of Dodge City, five miles west of the fort
(carefully placed beyond military regulations so that
whiskey could be sold), was erected by H. L. Stitler, a
government teamster* It was built as a stopping place
for freighters and buffalo hunters. When shortly there
after several saloons, housed in tents, opened for busi
ness, they were placed near Stitler ? s soddy. Before the
year was out, Charlie Meyers, a veteran buffalo hunter,
established a trading post close by.

In 1872 the construction gangs building the Santa Fe
Railroad arrived and raised their tents and knockdown
shacks in the vicinity. Business picked up instantly. Sev
eral months later the chief engineer of the railroad com
pany, Albert A. Eobinson, surveyed a townsite. The place

280 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

needed a name, and the dozen or more permanent resi
dents decided on Buffalo City. Because it was a duplica
tion of an existing name, the Post Office Department
refused to accept it, so Buffalo City was discarded and
Dodge City came into being.

The Santa Fe had been streaking across Kansas in a
race with time to reach the Colorado line and claim its
land grants. When the grading crews moved on, the track
layers moved in. Late in August the first work train
chugged into Dodge. Several weeks later the canvas and
tar-paper town saw its first passenger train. It brought
the vanguard of gamblers and sharpers, pimps and
prostitutes that were to draw such formidable reinforce
ments that by '78, Robert M. Wright, the town's leading
citizen, was moved to pen his often-quoted description
of Dodge. "Beautiful Bibulous Babylon of the Frontier.
Her principal business is polygamy . . . her code of morals
is the honor of thieves, and decency she knows not. Her
virtue is prostitution and her beverage is whiskey. She
is a merry town and the only visible support of a great
many of her citizens is jocularity. The town is full of
prostitutes and every other place is a brothel." 4

And Bob Wright, the former sutler at Fort Dodge, '
was neither a reformer nor one easily shocked. He had
been on the frontier too long for that. With his partner
Charles Eath, the firm of Eath and Wright, general out
fitters, had the largest business of its kind on the frontier,
both in the days when the buffalo hunters were interested
only in taking robes and later when the shaggy beasts
were slaughtered just for their hides. After Eath bought
out his partner, Bob Wright established the firm of
Wright and Beverley Judge H. M. Beverley had made
his fortune in Texas but he was widely known and re
spected in Dodge and it soon became the dominant

DODGE, LAST OF THE COW TOWNS 281

mercantile establishment of the great trading area of
which Dodge City was the center.

There cannot be many who will dispute the statement
that Robert M. Wright was Dodge City's most influential
citizen, and not only because he was the town's richest
man and the biggest taxpayer in Dodge City and Ford
County. He was elected mayor and later served in both
houses of the State Legislature, representing the Six
teenth District. His Dodge City: The Cowboy Capital and
the Great Southwest, published in 1913, will always be the
basic book on Dodge City. If it is sometimes hard to read,
it was written by a man without any literary pretensions ;
but the picture it presents of the town he helped to found,
and of himself, is unmistakably life-size. Beautiful Wright
Park, the largest of the city's recreational areas, is a
lasting tribute to his memory.

Comment on Bob Wright is interjected here so that,
later on, the reader may be better able to judge the
truthfulness or falsity of Assistant Marshal Barp's ac
count of how he allegedly tossed him into the town
calaboose.

It was not until April 5, 1873, that Ford County was
organized by proclamation of Governor Osborn. Until
then there was no semblance of law nearer than Hays
City, ninety miles to the north, and with a brawling,
heterogeneous population of soldiers, bullwhackers,
buffalo hunters, and underworld riffraff afloat on a sea
of whiskey, Dodge had need of law if ever a town did.
Imitating their brethren of Abilene and Newton, the
saloonkeepers and gamblers banded together and took
on themselves the expense of hiring a marshal.

Jack Bridges had a try at it. He was gone before the
town had a chance to get acquainted with him. Billy
Brooks, late of Newton, had recovered from his wounds
and took the job.

282 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

Various stories, and they are just stories, say that
Brooks killed or wounded fifteen men in Ms first month
as marshal. Of his own killings, the most spectacular
was the snuffing out of the lives of four men in a matter
of seconds, one morning on Front Street. Somewhere be
fore coining to Dodge, he had slain a man in an argument.
The attending circumstances were not to the liking of
the victim's four brothers. Learning that Brooks was in
Dodge, they came down from Hays City to square their
account with him. Being told that they were in town and
that it was their announced intention to gang up on him,
Brooks went looking for them. When the smoke cleared,
all four brothers lay dead.

They say it was over the favor of a girl in Lizzie
Palmer 's house that Kirk Jordan, the veteran buffalo
hunter, tangled with Marshal Brooks. Lizzie Palmer is a
familiar name. It was in her brothel in Nauchville that
Ed Crawford, the Ellsworth policeman, was done in. The
girls got around as well as the men.

It was late in the afternoon when Kirk Jordan rode up
Front Street and got down from the saddle, carrying his
big .50 Sharps buffalo gun. Bob Wright and others were
witnesses to what followed. They saw Marshal Brooks
coming up the eight-foot-wide plank sidewalk from the di
rection of the railroad depot. Old whiskey barrels, filled
with water, the town's only protection against fire, were
placed along the sidewalk, next to the buildings. When
Brooks saw Jordan waiting for him with his big gun, he
dropped out of sight behind the nearest barrel.

Without a word passing between them, Jordan swung
his gun to the shoulder and fired. The big slug cut through
the top steel hoop, passed through the barrel and caught
the same hoop on the opposite side. A stream of water
squirted into the air. Thinking that he had killed Brooks,
Jordan mounted and rode away.

DODGE, LAST OF THE COW TOWNS 283

The marshal got up, wet from the neck down, but
without a scratch. With his knife he dug the slug out of
the barrel and carried it into the Alhambra saloon. He
knew that he was finished in Dodge, Friends hid Mm until
after dark and then spirited him out to the fort, where he
caught the first train east.

Bob Wright expressed the feeling of the town when
he said, "Good riddance/'

Billy Rivers took Brook's place as marshal.

Dodge had a population of a thousand by now. It was
still a buffalo hunter's town. Very few men were bother
ing to take robes. With hides in demand for their leather
the great slaughter began. Bob Wright estimated that in
'73 twenty-five million buffaloes roamed the plains in the
Dodge City area. 5 The figure was far too high, but they
were there in such numbers that had anyone dared to
suggest that the day would come when they would be all
but exterminated he would have been laughed out of
town. And yet only a year later there were signs that
they were being thinned out. Buffalo hunters from Dodge
had to venture into the forbidden Texas Panhandle to
find the big herds. It resulted in the battle of Adobe
Walls, in which Bat Masterson, then only twenty by his
figures, distinguished himself.

A flint hide, delivered in Dodge, was worth two to three
dollars. Men flocked in, tenderfoots, farmers, ex-soldiers.
Everybody who owned a gun wanted to get in on the
bonanza.

The panic sweeping the country curtailed the buying
of the great tanneries in the East. The price of hides in
Dodge City dropped to a dollar. Wright and Beverley, and
the rival firm of Leonard and Myers, convinced that the
market would recover, continued to buy them by the thou
sand. Many photographs are in existence showing great
stacks of hides piled high in ricks and other thousands

284: WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

just heaped together in mounds beside the Santa Fe
tracks, awaiting shipment. Wright says that his firm
often had as many as forty thousand hides on hand.

To grasp some idea of the extent of the business in
hides, bones, and buffalo meat, these figures given by
Colonel Eichard I. Dodge are illuminating:

Pounds of meat: Santa Fe railroad 1,617,600
Pounds of bones: Sante Fe railroad 2,743,100
Hides: Santa Fe railroad 459,453

Total number of hides shipped on all
railroads for period 1872-74 1,378,359

These figures given on meat and bones are for the year
1873. 6

The grasshoppers that devastated central and eastern
Kansas were a minor nuisance in Dodge. But by the time
the effects of the panic were over, the hide-hunting was
finished. The bones remained to be marketed, and for a
year or two it was a million-dollar business.

Back in 73 a secret Vigilante Society was formed for
the purpose of assisting in maintaining law and order.
Unfortunately, it was infiltrated by some of the element
it had been organized to suppress. Major Dodge ? s negro
orderly drove into town every day in an Army ambulance
to run errands and make various purchases. Scott and
Hicks, two of the vigilantes, in drunken fun made off
with the rig while the negro was in a store. He ran out to
stop them and he was shot dead. The story swept over
Dodge that in retaliation the military was going to burn
the town. The wild rumor resulted in Tom Nixon, the well-
known buffalo hunter and later assistant marshal of the
town, leading half a hundred armed men out to the fort
and informing the major that if he sent troops to burn
Dodge they would be shot down.

DODGE, LAST OF THE COW TOWUS 285

By telegraph Major Dodge got the authorization of
Governor Osborn to enter the town and make the neces
sary arrests. At the head of his troops he left the post
and rode into Dodge. The cavalry blocked all roads and
a search was made for the murderers. Hicks was found
and taken into custody. Scott escaped. The t threatened
battle did not take place. A provost guard was left in
town until order was restored. The word "vigilante"
was not heard in Dodge again.

There is no evidence that Dodge City ever made a
bid for the Texas cattle trade. Longhorns weren't any
novelty in Dodge; for three or four years the herds
being driven north to Ogallala had been crossing the
Arkansas River four miles west of town. When they came
up the Jones and Plummer Trail in the late spring of
75, their destination Dodge City, the town was not ready
for them, the stockyards were inadequate, Beebe's Iowa
House was the best it had to offer in the way of a hotel,
and Front Street was just a long block of clapboard
shacks.

Grangers and barbed wire had turned the big herds
to Dodge. Again the old conflict of farmer versus drover
was the deciding factor, and, as invariably happened,
the cattleman had been routed and forced to turn in some
other direction to find a market.

The transition from buffalo town to cow town was
swift. Dodge accomplished it without losing its virility.
Unlike Abilene and the other Kansas markets, it had its
solid foundation as an established frontier town on which
to build. It was so advantageously located that it didn't
have to worry about the cattle trade being there today
and gone tomorrow. As long as Texas cattle were trailed
into Kansas, they must come to Dodge City. For the
present it would be only the herds coming up the Jones
and Plummer Trail, but soon other thousands would be

286 win), WOOJXY AND WICKED

heading north over the new Western Trail that curled
past Fort Griffin and Fort Elliott (Mobeelie). With the
buffalo herds and the Comanches gone from the Staked
Plains, Texas stockmen would be moving in, and when
they put their herds together their destination would be
Dodge City.

By mid-July the number of Longhorns being held on
the lowlands across the river, awaiting their turn at the
shipping pens, seldom dropped below forty thousand.

Young Texans by the hundred swarmed into Dodge.
Saloons, gambling tables, and the brothels never closed.
Pistols were fired every hour of the day and night some
in celebration, some in anger. Before the season was over,
three cowboys had to be carried to Boot Hill killed by
regretful friends. No one has attempted to say how many
were wounded. Marshal Eivers and his deputies deposited
a number of drunks in the sixteen-foot well that was the
town lockup as much for the prisoners' protection as
for their own. It was generally understood that the men
who were paying the officers their wages had instructed
them to see nothing and do nothing, whenever possible.
In other words, as the trite, modern-day expression has
it, "Nobody shoots Santa Glaus. "

Marshal Eivers resigned at the close of the season,
his term of office distinguished only by the fact that by
looking the other way at the right time he had managed
to survive.

CHAPTER XXVI

DODOE CITY, FACT AND FICTION

KEBUILDING and refurbishing
n rof the town began before the shipping
LJ season was over, and it continued at a
quickened pace throughout the winter and into the early
spring of '77. Deacon Cox built the Dodge House. Fifty
rooms, no less. Its table offered a daily menu of delicacies
and imported wines and liquors that equaled the Drovers'
Cottage in the days of Lou Gore.

The saloons, especially the Long Branch, took on an
air of elegance. Across the plaza, on what was coining
to be known as the South Side, the Lady Gay Theatre and
the Comique were erected. Two more dance-halls, one
Rowdy Kate Lowe's establishment, were added to the
four already there. Ham Bell, the former marshal of
Great Bend, built the famous Elephant Barn, perhaps
the biggest livery barn Kansas ever knew. With its corrals
it covered the equivalent of three city blocks. That it
wasn't quickly destroyed by fire started by some careless
cowboy or bullwhacker was a miracle, for fifty to a hun
dred of them slept there nightly. The heavy-freighting
business out of Dodge provided a substantial part of the
town's prosperity.

The number of South Side saloons tripled. Behind the

287

288 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

saloons and dance-halls, rows of two-room cabins were
thrown together for immoral purposes. All this activity
explained itself ; Dodge City had got hold of a gold mine
and it meant to exploit it.

The Santa Fe tracks cut through the center of a
seventy-five-yard-wide plaza from east to west. The po
lice had designated the tracks as the Deadline. You could
do as you pleased south of the tracks. When you crossed
them to the North Side, you took off your guns and left
them on the racks in Wright and Beverley's or one of the
other designated places. Of course there were some who
felt that the Deadline did not apply to them. Percentage
wise they were surprisingly few, and they invariably
ended up by spending the night in the calaboose, which for
the sake of convenience was located south of the tracks.
The small square building of heavy planks, with barred
windows, had replaced the well as the town lockup.

In the '70 's a trail boss bringing a herd up from the
south put it on grass below the river. It was not uncommon
for thirty to forty outfits to be drawn up south of the
Arkansas. After dark it was a picturesque sight to see
their campfires dotting the plains. The Arkansas was an
unpredictable river ; when it was low, a herd could be put
across without difficulty; at other times it spread out
over the bottoms in a brown flood. The wooden toll bridge
had to be used then. The Toll Bridge Company was one
more profitable enterprise fathered by Bob "Wright, Ab
(or A. B.) Webster, and several others.

Between the river and the railroad tracks, which bi
sected Dodge, there was a distance of a mile and a half,
which even to this day is variously called South Dodge,
or just the South Side. In cow town days the section of it
l^ing closest to the dividing tracks was the hotbed of
violence, unbridled license, and depravity, so that Dodge

DODGE CITY, FACT AND FICTIOK 289

City really had a South Front Street and a North Front
Street. ^

Where, it is often asked, did the cowboys, who were
the principal spenders, get the thousands of dollars they
allegedly squandered every day. The wages of many
were no more than thirty dollars a month; top hands
never got better than forty. It wouldn't seem that a man
could make much of a splurge on that kind of money. A
little arithmetic will supply the explanation. When a cow-
puncher hit Dodge, he usually had five months' wages
due him, so he had between one hundred fifty and two
hundred dollars in his bankroll when he plunged into
the distractions of the town. Since the number of in
coming and outgoing Texans there was a constant turn
over seldom fell as low as three hundred and was often
as high as four hundred, simple multiplication will show
that they were pouring forty to fifty thousand dollars a
day into the greedy hands of the entrepreneurs of
whiskey, gambling, and vice. If they had anything left,
they "frittered" it away on food, clothing, and items of
personal adornment. There was no point in going back
to Texas with money in your pocket.

It seems reasonable to believe that their previous ex
perience in the Kansas towns that had preceded Dodge
had somewhat conditioned them to an acceptance of a no-
gun ordinance. They reserved the right to defy it which
they continued to do but not with what they had once
considered to be their God-given right to take a town
apart.

Prior to E&rp's being added to the police force, Jack
Allen, a gunslinger with a reputation for toughness, had
been City Marshal Deger's right-hand man. In a foolish
exhibition of his authority he tangled with the first bunch
of Texans to reach Dodge, and instead of shooting it
out let them back him down. After hiding in the Santa Fe

290 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

freight shed overnight he slipped out of Dodge on the
first train west. It left the vacancy that Earp was hired
to fill. With exception of the addition of Neal Brown the
police force remained intact for the rest of the season.
About one of its members, William Barclay" (Bat)
Masterson, as much nonsense has been written as sur
rounds the mythical Wyatt Earp. Wyatt unfailingly takes
a friendly but patronizing attitude about Bat, and yet,
off the record and measuring them against the known
facts, Bat Masterson was his superior in every way. When
he was in trouble and he often was, for he was no
plaster saint he was far the more popular of the two in
Dodge. This is attested by the frequency with which Ms
name appeared in the Dodge City newspapers, from whom
Earp got scant attention.

In the spring of '76 Bat was serving as an Army
scout, stationed at Fort Elliott, down in the Texas Pan
handle. The tough little town of Sweetwater, which had
to give up the name in favor of Sweetwater, county seat
of Nolan County, and become Mobeetie, had grown up
in the shadow of Fort Elliott. To Mobeetie came Molly
Brennan, the same Molly Brennan who had been Billy
Thompson's light of love in Ellsworth. Sergeant King,
the Army's bad boy, was also there. The reader will re
member King from the incident in Wichita. Molly must
have had something. Bat fancied her, and so did the
sergeant. The latter caught them dancing together one
night and from the doorway shot her dead and put a
slug into Bat's leg. From the floor Bat fired and killed
King.

The wound he received lamed Bat, and when he ap
peared in Dodge in May, he was walking with a cane.
Ridiculous tales have been told of how he used the cane
to subdue obstreperous cowboys and winning from it the
name of "Bat." There were other "Bats" on the frontier

DODGE CITY, FACT AND FICTIOlsr 291

who got the sobriquet though they never wielded a cane.
"Bat" was usually a contraction of "Battling," and
that was undoubtedly the case with Masterson. At a
Fourth-of-July celebration in Dodge he was presented
with a gold-headed cane. From this we get the dandified
television caricature we have with us today.

There were four Masterson brothers, Bat, Ed, Jim, and
Tom. The U.S. Census of 1880 states Bat was born in
Canada and gives his age as twenty-five, which would
verify his claim that he was only eighteen when he first
came to Dodge City.

The four Mastersons were outnumbered by the Earps,
of whom there were Wyatt, Jim, Morgan, Virgil, Warren,
and Newton, a half brother.

Charley Bassett was serving by appointment as sheriff
of Ford County, with his deputies Bill Tilghman and
Morgan Earp. It was not part of their duty to assist in
policing Dodge, but they were always available when City
Marshal Deger requested their help. United, the city po
lice and the sheriff's force presented a formidable array
of peace officers. They made no attempt to curb the vio
lence and hilarity of the South Side. Shooting the knobs
off the doors of the cribs and indulging in target practice
all hours of the day and night were considered good fun.
Sometimes the gun-fighting grew serious. At least three
cowboys were killed and given burial on Boot Hill. North
of the tracks the ordinances were enforced. Earp gained
a local celebrity for the skill and dexterity with which he
could buffalo a non-conformer and drag him to the
calaboose. At the end of the season the police had estab
lished the enviable record of maintaining a fair degree of
law and order without a single killing.

Bat Masterson left Dodge in September for Deadwood,
Dakota Territory, and the gold fields, Wyatt and his
brother Morgan followed him several weeks later. In

292 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

Sidney, Nebraska, they ran into Bat, who had gotten no
farther than Cheyenne, where he had had a great run of
luck gambling. He was on his way back to Dodge. He tried
to get the Earps to turn back with him. But they went on.
When he reached Dodge, he bought a half interest in a
gambling room.

The following item appeared in the Dodge City Times
of June 9, 1877 :

Bobby Gill done it again. Last Wednesday was
a lively day for Dodge. Two hundred cattlemen
in the city; the gang in good shape for business ;
merchants happy, and money flooding the city,
is a condition of affairs that could not continue
in Dodge very long without an eruption . . . Robert
Gilmore was making a talk for himself in a rather
emphatic manner, to which Marshal [Larry]
Deger took exceptions, and started for the dog
house with him. Bobby walked very leisurely
so much so that Larry felt it necessary to ad
minister a few paternal kicks in the rear. This
act was soon interrupted by Bat Masterson, who
wound his arm affectionately around the Mar
shal's neck and let the prisoner escape. Deger
then grappled with Bat, at the same time calling
upon the bystanders to take the offender's gun
and assist in the arrest.

Policeman Joe Mason appeared upon the scene
at this critical moment and took the gun. But
Masterson would not surrender yet, and came
near getting hold of a pistol from among several
which were strewed ftround over the sidewalk,
but half a dozen Texas men came to the Marshal's
aid and gave him a chance to draw his gun and
beat Bat over the head until the blood flew . . .
The city dungeon was reached at last and in he
[Bat] went.

Next day Judge Frost administered the penalty
of the law by assessing twenty-five and costs to
Bat . . . and five to Bobby.

DODGE CITY, EACT AND FICTION ' 293

Gilmore was Billy Thompson's brother-in-law and
was supposed to be gathering evidence to help Billy, who
was in the Kansas penitentiary awaiting trial for the
killing of Sheriff Whitney*

Four months later Bat was back on the police force,
serving under Marshal Deger. Apparently you couldn't
keep a good man down in Dodge City in those days.

In the spring city election Jim "Dog" Kelley, half
owner with P. L. Beatty of the popular Alhambra saloon,
running unopposed, had been elected mayor. Despite
Wyatt 's poor opinion of Deger he was retained as city
marshal.

It was at Kelley 's urgent request, says Earp, that he
returned to Dodge on July 5 and resumed at once his po
sition as assistant marshal of the town. Contradicting
him is this item in the Dodge City Times, dated July 7.

Wyatt Earp is in town again. We hope he
will accept a position on the force once more.

Two weeks later the Times had this to say :

Miss Frankie Bell, who wears the belt for
superiority in point of muscular ability, heaped
epithets upon the unoffending head of Mr. Earp
to such an extent as to provoke a slap from the
ex-officer, besides creating a disturbance of the
quiet and dignity of the city, for which she re
ceived a night's lodging in the dog house and a
reception at the police court next morning, the
expense of which was about $20,00. Wyatt Earp
was assessed the lowest limit of the law, one
dollar.

These items from the Times, especially the dates on
which they were published, open a rather wide field of
speculation. If, as Earp says, he received a telegram in
Cheyenne from Kelley, urging him to come back at once,
because the town was in danger of being taken over by

294 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

the Texans, it seems strange that he was not yet back
in harness on July 21, sixteen days after he returned.
Equally puzzling is the fact that his name does not ap
pear again in the public prints until January 22, 1878,
when the Ford County Globe reported:

Wyatt Earp, our old assistant marshal is at Ft.
Clark, Texas.

It raises some questions. Did Kelley actually telegraph
Earp at Cheyenne, or is the statement that he did of a
piece with that other celebrated telegram from George
Hoover that supposedly brought Wyatt to Dodge City
from Wichita? Furthermore, what evidence is there that
he was a member of the force at any time during the
year of 1877? The answer, is none. His name does not
appear in Dodge City newspapers. Nor doe.s it occur in
the records of the police court, admitting that those rec
ords are not complete.

This is where those who claim that he served only
two hitches as assistant marshal part company with those
commentators who insist that he wore the badge for three
stretches. The latter have him on the force from July to
September 1877, But they offer no evidence to support
their contention. All they have for it is Earp's word.

Though the record is silent regarding him for some
months, the material he gave his biographer shows him
ruling Dodge with an iron hand. For the first time we
are told that this or that wealthy cattleman, resenting
his return to Dodge, had placed a price tag of a thou
sand dollars on his life. The plots against him become his
favorite device for exhibiting his mastery of men and
establishing the constant danger in which he lived.

Clay Allison, "the wild man of the Washita," rode
into Dodge. He had a number of "credits" notched on
his gun, among them the killing of the town marshals of

DODGE CITY, FACT AND FICTION 295

Cimarron, New Mexico, and Las Animas, Colorado. Ac
cording to Wyatt, Allison was in Dodge to ''get him an
other marshal." No evidence of this has been produced.
They meet, and Earp brings him up short. Without a shot
being fired, the noted gunman turns around and high
tails it out of Dodge.

Surely this should have merited a line or two in one
of the town's wide-awake newspapers. Obviously they
missed it, or it never happened.

Dodge had never been busier. Two hundred wealthy
Texas owners and assorted cattle buyers were in town;
Dodge had become something more than just a shipping
point for Texas cattle. Mari Sandoz in her authoritative
The Cattlemen says 201,159 Longhorns were shipped
from Dodge City in 1878. There were other thousands of
" through " cattle going north and thousands that were
driven to northern Indian reservations.

Among the Texans in Dodge were men who had been
prominent in the Texas cattle trade from its inception :
Captain Millett, Major Seth Mabry, Jim Ellison, the
Driskills, Print Olive they were all there.

Tobe Driskill, the head of the Driskill clan, celebrating
the sale of a Driskill herd that had just come up the trail,
got gloriously liquored, according to Earp, and, getting
his pistols from the check rack in a Front Street saloon,
stepped out on the sidewalk. With a smoking six-gun in
either hand, he bellered his intention to stand Dodge on
its ear. Earp came running from across the plaza, and
with the twelve-inch barrel of his Buntline Special, rocked
the wealthy cowman to sleep and heaved him into the so-
called "dog house" for the night. In the morning,
Driskill was fined $100 for disturbing the peace.

For the uninformed, the Buntline Special was the
standard Colt .45 Peacemaker with a twelve-inch barrel,
made especially for E. Z. C. Judson, known to the eastern

296 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

half of the United States as Ned Buntline, author of a
hundred and one lurid Wild West tales. Looking for
publicity, he came to Dodge and presented a Buntline
Special to Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Bill Tilghman,
Charley Bassett, and Neal Brown. Bat and the others
soon cut the barrel down to standard length. Earp found
the big "hogleg," with its added weight, admirably
adapted to his favorite practice of putting a trouble
maker to sleep with a tap on the side of the head.

A fine of a hundred dollars for violating the no-gun
ordinance was an unusually heavy fine. Coupled with the
fact that it was assessed against a man of Tobe Driskill's
prominence, it seems that it was newsworthy enough to
merit a few lines in one or more of the Dodge City news
papers. The old files fail to reveal any mention of it, nor
does it appear in the police-court docket. Perhaps it
never happened.

But law enforcement, as practiced by the assistant
marshal, really got into high gear a few evenings later.
Wyatt was in the Delmonico restaurant when two shots
were fired nearby on the street. He left his supper and
hurried to the door to see a smallish man "whom lie
recognized as a violinist with a traveling theatrical
troupe " running toward him, crying that he had been
shot. Blood was streaming down his face from a scalp
wound. He was being pursued by a drink-crazed Texan
by the name of "Bob Bachal" one of four brothers, a
family of real cattle kings. The assistant marshal clipped
him on the head with his Buntline Special and with Po
liceman Neal Brown's help lugged the senseless prisoner
to the calaboose.

News of the arrest spread rapidly. Botr Wright
Eobert M. Wright, one of the founders of Dodge, highly
respected and politically and financially its leading
citizen reached the jail as "Bachal" was about to be

DODGE CITY, FACT AKD FICTION 297

locked up. He is alleged to have told the assistant marshal
that he couldn't lock up "Bob Kachal," whose business
was worth half a million dollars a year to Dodge; that
if the prisoner wasn't released, Dodge City would have
a new assistant marshal in the morning. And now we
quote :

"Thereupon Wyatt swung open the door of the
calaboose and pitched the irate legislator (Bob Wright)
into jail with 'Bachel', turned the key and went across
the tracks to ascertain the extent of the violinist's in
juries/'

We are asked to believe that Wright languished in jail
overnight. Larry Deger was still city marshal. He cer
tainly had authority over his assistant marshal. Would
he have permitted this indignity to be suffered by his
best friend, Bob Wright? Would Chalk Beeson, G-eorge
Hoover, Charley Bassett, and a dozen others, the big men
of Dodge, have kept hands off? Bat Masterson can be in
cluded, for of Bob Wright he said: " Everybody in the
State knows Bob Wright. His honesty and integrity have
never been questioned. ' '

And what about Earp himself? Would he have dared
anything so rash? It passes belief. Would the Dodge City
Globe, if not the Times, Bob Wright's staunchest sup
porter, have remained silent? There is only one answer;
it never happened. It is a fabrication equaled only by the
Ellsworth fiction.

Ben Thompson came to Dodge as soon as his brother
was acquitted. He found old friends and some enemies
there, and among the latter was little Luke Short, the
pint-sized gambler who was running the gambling con
cession in the Long Branch, the biggest and most profit-
table saloon and gambling house in town. Chalk Beeson
and Will Harris had purchased the Long Branch from
Charley Bassett and A. J- Peacock, the original owners.

298 WILD, WOOLLY ASTD WICKED

Harris, highly respected, was a gambler by profession
and had amassed a snug fortune. As for Chalkley Beeson,
there never was a more popular man in Dodge. Under its
new management the Long Branch quickly became the
headquarters of the sporting fraternity. Harris was an
Easterner and had put in some years at Long Branch,
the fashionable resort on the Jersey shore. It was at his
suggestion that Charley Bassett had adopted the name.

Ben was often seen in the Long Branch. The enmity
between him and Short has never been explained, but
neither would drink at the same bar with the other. Both
were small men, Ben a chunky five feet five. Luke topped
him by an inch, but even after a heavy dinner he never
weighed more than a hundred forty pounds. That this toy
bulldog and fighting bantam would settle their differ
ences in a blast of gunfire was freely predicted. It never
came to that, possibly because they realized that neither
had the necessary edge on the other.

That brings us to the disputed story of Belle Starr,
the i i Outlaw Queen, ' ' Fred Sutton says that he saw her
in Dodge. As he tells it, Belle and Blue Duck, her outlaw
paramour, mounted on superb horses, rode into town and
put up at Mrs. Kelley's boardinghouse. They had been
there only a day or two when Blue Duck borrowed two
thousand dollars from Belle and lost it " bucking a faro
game.' 5 That evening, Belle paid their bill at the board
inghouse, they saddled their horses and rode down in
front of the gambling house in which he had lost the
money. Leaving Blue Duck to hold the horses, Belle went
upstairs to the gambling room over the saloon (the de
scription fits the Long Branch), flashing a six-gun, she
held up the place, scooped up seven thousand dollars
from the tables, and backed out.

"In the gambling hall," says Sutton, "were all sorts
of armed men, gamblers, gunmen, killers, but when they

DODGE CITY, FACT AND FICTION 299

saw a woman outlaw at work they were too astonished to
move/' 1

Belle and Blue Duck are said to have galloped away
into the night and no one went after them.

It is an engaging tale, but there is not the slightest evi
dence to support it. Yet it deserves a place in the story
of Dodge, even though in the category marked " folklore
fiction. ' ' Homer Croy, the foremost authority on Missouri-
Oklahoma outlaws, and particularly on Belle Starr, sums
it up in a sentence: " Belle Starr was never in Dodge
City."

CHAPTER XXVII

THE BADGE WEARERS

F"1HE only cloud on the horizon that
n rtroubled Dodge as the year drew to a
LJ close was the brewing clamor in other
parts of Kansas for a state-wide quarantine on Texas
cattle. There were now thousands of Shorthorns in Kan
sas, and as the number increased so did the fear of more
outbreaks of tick fever.

It was a threat, but Dodge didn't take it too seriously,
contending that if such a law were passed it could not
be enforced.

Life in Dodge was suddenly enlivened by the hottest
political contest in the Cowboy Capital's stormy existence.
Larry Deger announced himself a candidate for the office
of sheriff of Ford County, on the Eepublican ticket. A
few days later Bat Masterson tossed his hat into the ring.
Dodge was so overwhelmingly Eepublican that whoever
got the party nomination was as good as elected. Earp
takes credit for first having suggested to Masterson that
he make the race. This was supposed to have happened
when they met in Sidney. The bloody shellacking Deger
had given Bat in the Bobby Gill fracas provided him with
a better and more personal reason for opposing Deger.

Greorge Hoover, who, according to Wyatt, had little use

300

THE BADGE WEARERS 301

for Deger, came out for him, but with the backing- of Dog
Kelley the City Republican Committee gave Bat the nomi
nation by a margin of one. Deger then jumped the political
fence and entered the race as the Democratic candidate.
Dodge had better than four hundred qualified voters. Bat
won the election, but only by three votes, which must
stand as a tribute to Deger ? s personal popularity.

When Larry announced his candidacy on the Democratic
ticket, Mayor Kelley dismissed him as marshal and ap
pointed Ed Masterson in his place. This was done without
Bat's knowledge and he blew up a storm about it. Though
Dog Kelley had always favored the Mastersons and the
Earps, Bat gave the mayor a tongue-lashing- It was his
contention that Ed was too soft, too easygoing to be a
match for the hundreds of wild young Texans who would
be coming up the trail in a few months ; that instead of
clubbing a drunk with his pistol barrel, he would try to
talk a man into going along quietly to the lockup. Bat
knew how it would end. Some gun toter would put a slug
into Ed and that would be the end of it.

His prediction was almost fulfilled on the night of
November 10. A row broke out in the Lone Star dance-
hall between Bob Shaw and a man known as Texas Dick.
Marshal Masterson was sent for. He tried to effect a
peaceable settlement, but the shooting began and Ed went
down, the slug striking him in the chest and coming out
under the right shoulder blade. With his right hand use
less Ed shot with his left, not killing Shaw but putting
him out of action. Texas Dick was also rendered Jiors de
combat.

If Bat Masterson was feared and respected, and hated
by some, everybody was Ed's friend. Dodge waited anxi
ously until his recovery was certain.

Bat was sworn in as sheriff in January 1878. He imme
diately named Charley Bassett undersheriff and chose

302 WILD, WOOLLY ASTD WICKED

Simeon Woodruff and John Straughan for Ms deputies.

"What appeared to be the beginning of a long and quiet
winter was shattered when news was flashed to Dodge
from Kinsley, thirty-eight miles to the east, that the Dave
Budabaugh-Mike Bourke gang had attempted to rob a
Santa Fe express train. Though the crime had not oc
curred in Ford County, the railroad company and the
sheriff of Edwards County appealed to Bat to go after the
gang. It was his first chance to prove his mettle in his
new office. He swore in a posse and took up the trail of
the robbers. In a blizzard, fifty miles from Dodge, at
Harry Lovell's cattle camp, he captured Dave Budabaugh
and a bandit named West. Along in March he took two
others into custody within a few miles of town. That left
Bourke and his companion running free. They were cap
tured in October and Mike was sent up for ten years. Bat
did not figure in Bourke 's capture, nor did former Assist
ant Marshal Earp, who says he had been following the
bandits' trail for months. The facts are worth examining.

The attempted holdup at Kinsley had been a complete
fiasco. No gang of adolescent amateurs could have bungled
it more completely. No money was taken; no one was
injured. Wyatt tells a quite different story. He says ten
thousand dollars was taken and he describes Dave Buda
baugh as "the most notorious outlaw in the range coun
try, rustler and robber by trade with the added specialty
of killing jailers in his breaks for liberty/' *

He explains his presence in Texas this way: "Late in
November, the Santa Fe Bailroad asked me to round up
the Dave Budabaugh-Mike Boarke [sic] gang of outlaws
which was robbing construction camps and pay-trains . . .
as I was a Deputy United States Marshal. I was offered
ten dollars a day and expenses if I'd go get them. " 2

By his own account he was all over Texas looking for
them, and for months after four of the gang, including

THE BADGE WEARERS 303

Kudabaugh, were safely stowed away in jail. There is
no evidence available to dispute his claim that he was
working for the Santa Fe. Ten dollars a day and expenses
were quite an improvement on the salary and share of the
bonus money lie had been receiving from Dodge City. His
interest in prolonging this profitable employment can be
understood, though the Department of Justice, Executive
Office for United States Marshals, would hardly have
countenanced having one of its commissioned officers on
any corporation's pay roll.

Information regarding the self-proclaimed status of
Wyatt Earp as a deputy U.S. marshal was requested from
the Department of Justice. The answer received says, in
part:

... in reply to your letter of November 21 re
questing, in effect, a definite statement as to
whether Wyatt Earp was or was not a United
States marshal or deputy United States marshal

We have found no official documents or papers
indicating that Wyatt Earp ever held a regular
commission as a United States marshal or deputy
United States marshal.

Until we find an official record indicating that
Wyatt Earp was a United States marshal or
deputy United States marshal, we can not say
that he ever served in either position and, of
course, we can not state definitely that he did not
serve in either position because . . . complete offi
cial records showing the names of all United
States, marshals and deputy United States mar
shals who served during Wyatt Earp's lifetime
. . . are not available.

The reader will have to take this as he will, though a
check was made with the National Archives with similar
negative results.

Whatever may have been Wyatt Earp's business in

304 WILD, WOOLLY ASTD WICKED

Texas in the early spring of '78, it was then that he first
met Doc Holliday, the tubercular dentist, gambler, and
killer of seven or eight men. They seem to have hit it off
from the start and from it developed the peculiar f riend-
ship that held them together until the days in Tombstone
were over.

Doc Holliday John H. Holliday of Valdosta, Georgia
was a marked man, living on borrowed time ; and he knew
it. The tall, emaciated ash-blond man with the expression
less blue eyes was a fatalist to whom nothing really meant
very much. Regard him in that light and he becomes un
derstandable. He lived on whiskey, but though he was a
steady two-quart-a-day man, no one ever saw Mrn intoxi
cated. That in itself set Tilrn apart and helped to create
a feeling akin to awe in other men.

Living with him at Fort Griffin was Big Nose Kate, a
formes: prostitute. What Doc saw in Kate Fisher is hard
to understand. She was coarse and crude and had a temper
to shame a fishwife. Sisters of her scarlet profession ac
cused her of indulging in sexual practices on which they
frowned. It certainly couldn't have been her looks that
made Doc provide her with bed and board for years.

Doe Holliday 's biographers are in disagreement "about
the woman best known as Kate Fisher. Some say she was
born Katherine Elder, in Davenport, Iowa, and was mar
ried to Doc in St. Louis, 1870. Pat Jahns says she was just
a prostitute that Doc picked up in the cribs in Dodge City.
That is difficult to believe, for there is substantial evidence
that she reached Dodge City from Fort Griffin, where she
and Doc were together. Allie Earp, Virgil's widow, in
Frank Waters' "The Earp Brothers of Tombstone,"
repeatedly refers to her as Mrs. Holliday. She does not
say that Kate was ever legally married to Doc.

The most popular story concerning her originated in
Wyatt Earp's imagination. According to Mm, Doc had

THE BADGE WEAKEES 305

killed a cowboy named Bailey at Fort Griffin. He was
awaiting trial, with Bailey's friends working up a lynch
ing bee. Big Nose Kate had a pair of saddled horses
waiting one night. When everything was in readiness for
escape, she set fire to the flimsy hotel in which she and
Doc had been living. As she had foreseen, every man ran
out to fight the flames. She got to Doc, armed him, and
away they fled. Weeks later when Earp returned to
Dodge, he found them living at the Dodge House.

City Marshal Ed Masterson had recovered from his
wound and was back on the job. He had lost none of his
popularity, but the town appeared to be getting away
from him. On March 5, Mayor A. B. (Ab) Webster, who
had succeeded Kelley, in a signed article in the Ford
County Globe, appealed for a tighter enforcement of the
ordinance against carrying deadly weapons within the
town limits. " Some of the ' boys' in direct violation of the
city ordinances carry firearms on our streets without
being called to account for the same, ' 9 he complains. * ' They
do so in such an open manner that it does not seem pos
sible that our city officers are in ignorance of the fact."

The criticism continued. By now there were so many
cow camps and ranches within riding distance of Dodge
that the town had a " native " cowboy population of sev
eral hundred. If they couldn't be made to toe the line,
what would the situation be in another month when the
shipping season opened and the Texans hit town?

Ed had Nat Haywood as assistant marshal, a compe
tent officer. His policemen were Charlie Trask and John
Brown. The whole force was under attack, but he stood
by his men. Though Bat was younger than Ed, he was the
bellwether of the Masterson clan ; when he spoke, Ed had
to listen. Stung by his cautic criticism, the city marshal
began to bear down. It led him to his death on the night
of April 9.

306 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

About ten o 'clock he heard pistol shots in the Lady Gray
Theatre and Dance Hall. With Assistant Marshal Hay-
wood he crossed the tracks on the run and found half a
dozen local cowboys whooping it up. Jack Wagner, well-
liquored, was the ringleader. Ed was well acquainted with
him. He disarmed Wagner and, seeing A. M. Walker,
Wagner's boss, in the crowd, turned the pistol over to
him, telling Walker to check it with the bartender in
accordance with the ordinance.

The trouble apparently settled, the two marshals
stepped out. Wagner and Walker followed them to the
sidewalk. Looking back, Ed saw that Wagner was pack
ing his six-gun again. For the second time he asked him
to hand it over. Wagner refused, and as they began to
scuffle, Walker jerked his six-gun and made Assistant
Marshal Haywood back away with the warning that if he
tried to interfere he would have his head blown off.

Bat had followed his brother and Haywood across the
Deadline and was within forty feet of the door when a
muffled shot, fired at such close range that it set Ed's
shirt afire, stopped him in his tracks. Ed staggered away,
supported by Haywood.

Bat's pearl-handled .45 's began to spatter lead. He
pumped four slugs into Wagner and three into Walker.
Wagner stumbled into Peacock's dance-hall and saloon
next door, mortally wounded. He was buried on Boot Hill
on April 11. Walker recovered, stood trial for his part in
the killing and was acquitted.

Bat rushed across the tracks after the shooting and
found Ed lying on the floor in George Hoover's wholesale
wine and liquor store, surrounded by friends, with death
only a few minutes away. Bat dropped down beside him
and took Ed in his arms, his tears falling unashamed.

Ed Masterson, admired and respected more as a man
than as a police officer, was given a funeral the like of

THE BADGE WEAREES 307

which Dodge City had never seen. Said the Dodge City
Times: "No one in Dodge, either living or dead, up to
that time had ever had such honor shown him. Every
business house in the city closed its doors on the day of
the funeral and almost every door in the city was draped
in crepe."

The sermon was preached at the Firemen's Parlor,
after which every vehicle in town joined in the long pro
cession to Fort Dodge, where Ed's remains were placed
in the military cemetery.

Charley Bassett was appointed to take Ed's place as
city marshal. Up to now women had been permitted in
the saloons at all hours. As a reform measure, an ordi
nance was passed prohibiting them from entering "prem
ises where liquor is sold before midnight." Presumably it
was figured that decent people would be off the streets by
that hour. By now Dodge City had its churches and schools
and at least three hundred inhabitants who would have
qualified as "decent" citizens in any community. Front
Street, the South Side, and the raw night life of the town
seldom touched them.

Wyatt Earp returned to Dodge from his wanderings
on May 12. The shipping season was in full swing and
upwards of a hundred Texas owners were in town await
ing the arrival of their herds. The majority were making
their headquarters at the Dodge House. Others were at
Bob Wright's hotel. If Wyatt was the great town tamer
he says he was, here was his opportunity to be appointed
marshal. The City Council had not confirmed Bassett as
city marshal. If the city fathers had wanted Earp, they
could have had him. Instead, they confirmed Bassett and
Wyatt joined the force in his old position of assistant mar
shal on May 14.

Perhaps he preferred it that way. As assistant marshal,
he was charged with collecting the license money from the

308 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

saloons, gambling joints, and the prostitutes, which was
used to defray the expenses of running the town. Up to the
time of his death he always had a weather eye out for a
dollar.

That Charley Bassett had no great personal regard for
Wyatt is reflected in the fact that when he was authorized
to add another policeman to the force he passed up the
Earp brothers, Morgan and Virgil, and named Jim Mas-
terson. This was on June 11.

By all accounts the summer of '78 was as riotous as '77,
with about the same number of killings and arrests.
Though the stockyards had grown until they were as large
as the McCoy yards in Abilene in that town's biggest
years, they still couldn't accommodate the trade. Some
owners, weary of waiting to get their cattle shipped, drove
on to Wakeeney and Ellis, on the Kansas Pacific.

A " boarder " in Mattie Silks' bordello for the elite
swallowed a dose of laudanum and was buried in the new
Prairie Grove Cemetery, the Council having forbidden
any more burials on Boot Hill.

Earp clashed again with Tobe Driskill No one was shot,
but Wyatt became obsessed once more with the idea that
various conspiracies to assassinate him were afoot. He
says some unknown cowpuncher fired a couple of shots at
him and that on overpowering the boy got from him the
admission that some wealthy cattlemen (not identified by
name) had promised him a thousand dollars for killing
him (Earp). After reading the would-be assassin a lec
ture he ordered him to get out of town and let him go.
It sounds incredible, but maybe Wyatt was " soft
hearted," as Bat once said he was.

Dodge was maturing and in proof the Fire Company
organized its first Fourth-of-July celebration. Owing to
the hilarity let loose on the night of the Third, the parade
to the grounds east of town got a late start. A delegation

THE BADGE WEARERS 309

from the Pueblo Fire Department had come from Colo
rado to engage the local lads in a tug-of-war contest. The
Reverend Mr. Wright offered a long prayer and Coroner
Mike Sutton obliged with a patriotic oration.

Chalk Beeson was on hand with the band he was organ
izing. ( This was the nucleus of the famous Cowboy Band
that was to appear as such a year later.) Togged out in
cowboy finery, including six-guns, it became the outstand
ing feature of cattlemen's conventions as far east as St.
Louis. There was horse racing. Deputy Sheriff Tilghman
carried off most of the prize money. (It is not generally
known that his horse Chant won the Kentucky Derby in
1894.)

The girls from the cribs and the bawdyhouses were
permitted to be present. They didn't lack for male com
panions, but the police saw to it that they were segregated
from the more respectable females present.

Less than two weeks later, on July 16, the Fire Company
went into mourning again. One of its bright lights, Deputy
Sheriff Harry T. McCarty, was shot to death while loung
ing innocently in the Long Branch saloon. By Dodge City
standards it was murder, rather than a killing. A drunk
named Tom O'Hara had snatched McCarty ? s .45 out of
the holster and shot him without warning or provocation.
He waived examination when charged and was committed
to stand trial at the next term of court In January 1869
he was sentenced to twelve years and three months in the
State Penitentiary.

Eddie Foy, later to become famous as one of the stage's
great comics, had been appearing with his company at the
Comique for some time. In his book, Clowning through
Life, he devotes considerable space to his days in Dodge.
He seems to have got on very well with the Earps and
Mastersons. On the night of July 26, with the theater
crowded, he was at the footlights, reciting one of his serio-

310 WILD, WOOLLY AHD WICKED

comic songs (it couldn't be called singing) when a young
Texan by the name of Ed Hoyt began firing blindly
through the thin walls. Foy says everybody who could
find room immediately flattened out on the floor. 3

Wyatt was standing outside the Comique. As he turned
the corner of the building, Hoyt 's horse bolted. The assist
ant marshal lunged for the animal and failed to get hold
of it. The rider fired a shot at him and missed. Wyatt
fired and also missed. Hoyt raced away for the toll bridge.
Earp fired a second shot and thought he had missed again
in the dark, but he heard the cowboy's pony slow to a
walk and then stop before it reached the south end of the
bridge. He and others found young Hoyt lying uncon
scious, a bullet hole in his back. He was carried to the
calaboose, where Dr. McCarty pronounced him mortally
wounded.

The dying man lingered for a week. In the meantime
Earp went to Topeka for three days to attend the Repub
lican State Convention. When he returned, Hoyt was
dead. Various accounts of the incident are given but all
agree that Ed Hoyt died without regaining consciousness.

It is the only killing on Wyatt Earp's Dodge City
record. It was justified. Earp made much of it, claiming
that Ed Hoyt had been hired to kill him. If he was, he
went about it in a strange way, firing three, perhaps four,
shots through the wall of the theater. If he realized that
it was Earp who was standing in front of the Comique
and if Earp was the man he was there to kill he could
hardly have expected to find a better opportunity for
downing him. The sensible explanation is that he didn't
recognize the assistant marshal, either when he fired at
him or when he drove his pony by Trim,

Stanley Vestal, who never goes so far as to question
the story of Wyatt's life that he (Wyatt) left for pos
terity, does make this comment: "Neither Foy nor Bat

THE BADGE WEABERS 311

nor the editor of the Times seems to have been aware of
any bounty posted on Wyatt's head." 4

Bat himself says : ' ' The drunken cowboy rode by "Wyatt,
who was standing outside the main entrance but evi
dently did not notice him, else he would not in all prob
ability have acted as he did. ' ' 5

Earp wouldn't have it that way. When Clay Allison
paid Dodge a second visit, " accompanied by a score of
gun-toting cowboys/' according to some, the assistant
marshal said at once that Clay was there to rub him out
for killing "his friend Ed Hoyt." He offers no proof that
Hoyt was Allison's friend or that the young Texan had
ever worked for him.

It seems that every writer who has attempted to tell
the story of Dodge has his own version of Clay's business
there that August morning. They don't even agree on
whom Allison was there to "get." Charley Siringo, the
cowboy author and detective, claims to have been an eye
witness. Maybe he was ; though he claimed to see many
things in many places, he did not see Clay Allison riding
into Dodge at the head of a score of Turkey Track cow
boys carrying rifles and following him as he searched the
saloons for some of the town police or the city marshal.
But that became Earp's story.

Dajne Coolidge, a writer who should have known better,
says Allison was there to "get" Bat Masterson and made
Bat "hunt his hole." 6 For a writer of the stature of
Dane Coolidge to put his name to such unmitigated non
sense is hard to excuse. Bat was not on the police force ;
he was sheriff of Ford County. He had had nothing to do
with killing young Hoyt. Then there is the equally absurd
story of Bat being seated in a second-story window of the
Dodge House with a big .50 Sharps on the window sill,
waiting for Allison to make his move, and that when Clay

312 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

saw Mm lie hustled into the Alhambra to recover Ms cour
age on wMskey and then rode out of town.

The weekly Ford Cotmty Globe, in its edition of August
6, notes Allison's presence in Dodge and states the reason.

Clay Allison, one of the Allison brothers, from
the Ciinarron, south of Las Animas, Colorado,
stopped off at Dodge last week on Ms way home
from St. Louis. "We are glad to say that Clay has
about recovered from the effects of the East St.
Louis scrimmage.

It would be interesting to know what that "East St.
Louis scrimmage' 5 was. But Allison for the second time
indulged in no hurrahing of Dodge. No shots were fired ;
no one was killed.

This may be as good a time as any to cast up the ac
count of the number of men killed by Dodge and Ford
County police officers in the decade of 1875-85 : Wyatt
Earp, one ; Morgan and Virgil Earp, none ; Bat Master-
son, one; Ed, Jim, and Tom Masterson, none; Bill Tilgh-
man, none; John Brown, Neal Brown, Larry Deger,
Charley Bassett, Ham Bell, Bob Vandenburg, Joe Mason,
Charlie Trask, and Nat Haywood, none; Dave Mather,
one. In later years,, when Dodge was fading, Assistant
Marshal Grant Wells killed a cowboy. So much for the
facts. There was a lot of killing in Dodge, but not by its
peace officers.

"When speaking of their contemporaries, living or dead,
it became the custom of these famous wearers of the silver
star to acclaim them wizards of the pistol, so fast and so
deadly accurate with a .45 that it made almost any play
against them "no contest." "Where and when, one may
ask, after looking at the record, did these masters of Mr.
Colt's famous Equalizer exhibit their skill?

CHAPTER XXVUI

DODGE LOSES ITS EDOE

1 IHE Santa Fe car loadings for 78 and
n r '79 are available, but they do not ac-
LJ count for the thousands of Longhorns
that left Dodge on the hoof. A government estimate
for the two years places the over-all figure at half a mil
lion. If that figure is approximately correct and there
is no reason to believe it isn't then something like three
million head of Texas cattle had been driven into Kansas
since the first herd reached Abilene in '67. The natural
increase in the cattle population of the Lone Star State
was equal to this annual draining away into Kansas, but
Kansas was not getting more than 70 per cent of the beef
cattle leaving Texas ranges. Inevitably it meant that the
Longhorn backlog was shrinking. Whatever problem it
posed for the future happily seemed too remote to require
any immediate consideration.

On August 17 young James W. ' * Spike " Kenedy
(spelled correctly with one w), the son of the rich Quaker
cattleman Miflin Kenedy, partner of the famous Captain
Richard King of the big King Ranch, got into a heated
argument with Dog Kelley, part owner of the Alhambra
saloon and gambling house, in which the trouble occurred,
and was forcibly ejected from the establishment. Young

313

314 WILD, WOOLLY A23T> WICKED

Kenedy put up a fight before lie was thrown out, but he
was no physical match for Kelley.

After hanging around the saloons for a week, plotting
his revenge, he took the train to Kansas City and bought
the fastest horse he could find. He was not back in Dodge
until Friday, October 4. The hour was between three and
four of a misty morning. He had been careful to avoid
being observed as he rode into town from the east. He
knew where Kelley 's two-room cabin was located at the
rear of the Western House, on the South Side. Before
leaving for Kansas City he had watched the place night
after night and knew that his intended victim slept in the
front room. .ATI he had to do now was ride past the cabin,
fire three or four shots through the window, and Mil Dog
Kelley as he slept.

Though gunfire was common enough on the South Side,
shots fired at that time of the morning aroused everyone
in the neighborhood. The Dodge City Globe says only two
shots were fired. Other sources say as many as four. Some
accounts have it that Kenedy entered a saloon after the
shooting with a companion and had several drinks before
riding out of town. The more believable story is that he
fled at once, riding up the river, and was seen and recog
nized as he dashed out of Dodge. Having planned the
crime carefully, and believing he had killed the three-
times mayor of Dodge City, he would hardly have done
otherwise.

What Spike Kenedy didn't know was that, during his
absence in Kansas City, Kelley had fallen ill and been
taken to the hospital at the fort. Before leaving he had
rented the cabin to two young women. One of them, Dora
Hand, alias Fannie Keenan, who was the most popular
singer and dance-hall entertainer in Dodge City. Her com
panion was Fannie Garretson, also a dance-hall enter
tainer. The latter was sleeping in the front room when

DODGE LOSES ITS EDGE 315

Kenedy fired through the window. The bullets missed her.
One went through the thin plastered partition and struck
Dora Hand in the right side under the arm, killing her
instantly.

On discovering what had happened, a posse consisting
of Sheriff Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Bill Tilghman, and
Charley Bassett (there may have been others) was or
ganized at once, and after questioning men who had seen
Kenedy riding out of Dodge, they struck off to the south
east, believing that riding up the river was only a ruse
to throw pursuit off the trail and that he would circle
the town and head for the Wagon Bed Springs crossing
of the Cimarron and put himself over the Kansas line into
No Man's Land, where he would be beyond the authority
of Kansas law officers.

This was the theory advanced by Earp and Tilghman ;
it was Bat 's contention that Kenedy was riding for Chey
enne. But he was won over and they made the seventy-
mile ride to Wagon Bed Springs. A hailstorm of such
violence that they had to seek shelter in a cut-bank hit
them in the late afternoon and cost them an hour. The
hailstorm was followed by a torrential downpour through
which they rode for the rest of the night.

On reaching the crossing examination showed that no
horseman had passed over since the rain ended. Believing
they were in time, they pulled up at a homesteader's soddy
for information and a bite to eat. While there, Tilghman
saw a horseman riding in from the north. It was young
Kenedy. It .took a shot from Bat's rifle that smashed the
Texan's right arm and a shot from Earp's gun that killed
the horse before the capture could be made.

Spike Kenedy was astounded when he learned that he
was wanted for killing a young woman, not Dog Kelley.
He was taken to Dodge, where an operation was performed
on his arm that left it useless for the rest of Ms life.

316 WILD, WOOLLY AlfTO WICKED

Word was flashed to Texas and Miflin Kenedy hurried
north. To the disgust of certain Dodge City officials, the
proceedings against his son were suddenly dropped on the
grounds that the evidence was not sufficient to convict.
Gossip had it that the rich old Quaker dug deep into his
pocket to get the acquittal. When his son was able to
travel, he took him back to Texas.

Reams of romantic drivel have been written about
beautiful Dora Hand. She has been variously described as
a former Boston opera singer, driven west to stay the
ravages of tuberculosis, a courtesan, a member of Dodge
City's " Fairy Belles " (a euphonious nickname for the
dance-hall girls who selected their companions for bed
from their dance-floor partners), an angel of mercy, a
promising young actress, and a lady whose reputation was
only slightly tarnished by her nighttime activities.

Perhaps she was a little of all those things. Some cynics
have said, however, that Kelley didn't rent his cabin to
her; that he just told her to move in while he was away;
that she had been there before and was well acquainted
with the place. In any event, Dodge loved her and gave
her a funeral second only to Ed Masterson >s. Songs and
sentimental verse have been written about her, and they
can be heard in Dodge City today. It has become a clich6
to say that morals are largely a matter of time and geog
raphy. But that doesn't make it any the less true. An idea
of how things went in those days in Dodge can be gained
from these items in the U.S. Census as of June 1880 :

James Masterson, age 24, City Marshal of
Dodge City, dwelling with Minnie Eoberts, age
16, occupation concubine.

And a few lines lower:

Bat Masterson, age 25, occupation, laborer,
dwelling with Annie Ladue, age 19, occupation
concubine*

DODGE LOSES ITS EDGE 317

Dodge had an Indian scare that began on September 19
and lasted for four days. Dull Knife and his Northern
Cheyennes were striking across Kansas. Fort Dodge was
deserted. Troops from Fort Hayes and Fort Wallace were
also in the field trying to intercept Dull Knife's band but
succeeding only in making themselves ridiculous. No one
seemed to know what was about to happen. Dodge City
felt sure it was to be attacked. Frantic telegrams for aid
were dispatched to Governor Anthony. He finally sent
them a hundred rifles and seven thousand rounds of am
munition. They were not needed. By that time the North
ern Cheyennes were well into Nebraska.

Bat had bought a half interest in Peacock's Lone Star
saloon and dance-hall. Maybe some people thought he was
getting ahead too fast as a public servant, and when he
ran for re-election for sheriff of Ford County, they voted
against him. Perhaps others felt that he had become too
much the dude with his pearl-gray bowler and modish
clothes. His opponent was George Hinkel, the manager of
Hoover's wine and liquor business. Quite naturally Hoo
ver came out for his own man, and behind it all was the
bitter opposition of Larry Deger. Bat had proved himself
an excellent sheriff, but he was snowed under.

It was a defeat for Wyatt as well as for Bat. When
Dog Kelley was re-elected mayor in the spring election
and Charley Bassett was retained as city marshal, the
Earps apparently lost interest in Dodge. Morgan went to
Butte, Montana, and joined the police there; Virgil went
to Prescott, Arizona, to work some mining claims. Jim
Earp, the eldest of the brothers, came to Bodge, but he
had a crippled foot and was no fighting man. Bat now
took an active interest in the Peacoek-Masterson business.

Late in January, with a foot of snow on the ground and
very few people in town, a roving evangelist arrived in
Dodge and arranged.with Eowdy Kate Lowe to hold eve-

318 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

ning revival services in her dance-hall. Kate supplied some
listeners, but the audiences and the collections were slim.
Kate spread the word that if they could get some dissolute
character like Prairie Dog Dave Morrow to attend a meet
ing it would set an example for some of the less hardened
sinners.

The two gamblers who ran the games in the Green
Front saloon pretended to see some merit in Rowdy Kate's
proposal and they promised to have Dave on hand that
evening. They figured that what Dodge needed just then
was a good laugh, and they were convinced that when the
preacher began raking Prairie Dog Dave over the coals
for his misspent life he wouldn't get far before there
would be some unexpected fireworks.

They dragged Dave in and sat down on either side of
him so that he couldn't make a break for the door. Half
an hour later they were beginning to think their plans
had miscarried. Instead of addressing his remarks to
Dave, the frock-coated evangelist spoke ecstatically of
the wonders of the life hereafter and how important it
was, here on the frontier where death was no farther away
than one's elbow, to live so that a man was already ready
to face Judgment Day. He offered himself as a shining
example. He was ready to meet his maker whenever the
Lord called.

Prairie Dog Dave listened until he had heard all he
could stand. Leaping to his feet, he drew his six-guns
and put half a dozen slugs into the ceiling of Eowdy
Kate's establishment. At the second shot the preacher
knocked the podium out of his way and disappeared
through the side door.

* * There you are 1 ' ' Prairie Dog Dave cackled as he faced
the startled gathering. "That old son of a bitch ain't no
more ready to die than I be!"

The first killing of the year occurred in the Long Branch

DODGE LOSES ITS EDGE 319

on the night of April 5. The papers were so hungry for
news they gave it as much coverage as they had given the
shooting down of City Marshal Ed Masterson. Maybe it
was an indication that Dodge's wild days were about over.

The principals were Cockeyed Frank Loving and Levi
Eiehardson. Eichardson was a well-know freighter and
had been on the frontier for years. Loving was a profes
sional gambler, reputed to be a dangerous man when
crossed, but not regarded as a troublemaker. They met
in the Long Branch and some words passed between them.
According to the Ford County Globe, Richardson was
overheard to say, "I don't believe you will fight," to
which Loving replied, "Try me and see."

"Both drew murderous revolvers and at it they went,
in a room filled with people, the leaden missives [sic] fly
ing in all directions," says the Globe. "There is no telling
how long the fight might have lasted had not Richardson
been pierced with bullets and Loving 's pistol left without
a cartridge ... It seems strange that Loving was not hit
... as the two men were so close together that their pistols
almost touched."

Richardson lived only a few minutes. Loving was ar
rested. The verdict of the coroner's jury was "self-
defense. ' '

Wyatt was on the force. He has a lot to say about how
the ordinance against carrying deadly weapons was en
forced along Front Street. He doesn't explain how Rich
ardson, Cockeyed Frank, and half a dozen others who
died by gunfire in the Long Branch and neighboring
saloons happened to be armed.

Summer came along. Dodge boomed again. The town
still had four good years ahead of it, but '79 was to be
the last big year. Almost unnoticed, the foundations on
which the town's reputation as the Cowboy Capital rested
were beginning to crumble. The farmer and Ms barbed

320 WILD, WOOLLY AST) WICKED

wire were catching up with the trail herds. The prairie
sod was being turned under and put to wheat, over two
thousand acres already. Hoof-and-mouth disease was
spreading through the tier of southern counties. In Topeka
the Shorthorn Breeders Association met in convention
and demanded a stiffer Herd Law and the embargoing of
all Texas cattle from March 1 to December 1. The Willard-
Murphy temperance movement was gaining adherents
every day. It had reached as far west as Larned and was
heading for Dodge. Perhaps the best proof of how things
were going was to be found in the bands of sheep that had
invaded the short-grass plains of Ford, Gray, and Hodge-
man counties.

Bat Masterson turned over his interest in the Lone
Star to his brother Jim and left Dodge for Leadville and
Denver. Tom Masterson went with him. On September 9
Wyatt said farewell to the Cowboy Capital. Of his going
the Dodge City Globe remarked:

Mr. Wyatt Earp, who has been on our police
force for several months, resigned his position
last week and took his departure for Las Vegas,
New Mexico.

Las Vegas was only a stop on the way. Wyatt was
headed for Tombstone. His brother Jim accompanied him.
In Trail City, across the Colorado line, Doc Holliday, an
other refugee from Dodge, caught up with them. Virgil '&
mining claims had failed to live up to their early promise,
and he joined Wyatt and the others. Of all the Earps and
the Mastersons only Jim Masterson was left to carry on
in Dodge City.

Al TJpdegraff, A. J. Peacock 's brother-in-law, had put
.in three weeks as assistant marshal, from September 23
to November 15, when City Marshal Charley Bassett re
signed. ?assett was another of the old guard who were
quitting Dodge Jim Masterson took Bassett 's place and

BODGE LOSES ITS EDGE 321

Neal Brown was named assistant marshal, Updegraff
went to work as bartender for Peacock and Masterson.

That arrangement among the three men seems to have
been satisfactory until the fall of 1880, when Masterson
became convinced that Updegraff was helping himself to
a share of the nightly receipts. When Peacock refused to
fire his brother-in-law, an open quarrel developed.

In a statement made later Updegraff claimed that the
trouble had its origin in the fact that one of the Lone Star
girls had filed charges against a friend of Master son's,
claiming he had stolen eighty dollars from her, and that
Masterson had tried to get him (Updegraff) to get her
to drop them. When he refused to intervene, Masterson
demanded that he be fired.

Whether true or not, matters went from bad to worse*
The quarrel was taken up by Peacock's friends on one
side and Jim Masterson 's on the other. More convinced
than ever that Peacock and Updegraff were giving him a
rooking, Jim telegraphed Bat to come to Dodge at once.

Bat was in Tombstone, dealing for Wyatt, who had
found the money with which to buy an interest in the
immensely profitable Oriental saloon and gambling
establishment. Where he got his big stake has never been
disclosed. Luke Short was also there, working for Earp.
Bat left for Dodge at once.

From his correspondence with Jim, Bat knew what to
expect when he dropped off the train on Saturday, April
16. He was armed. As the train pulled out and he walked
down the street looking for his brother, he saw Peacock
and Updegraff across the plaza. They knew why he had
come back. Instead of heeding his call that he wanted
to talk with them, they darted behind the handy calaboose
and drew their revolvers. Bat ran out to the tracks and
dropped down behind the slight enbankment. The famous
Battle of the Plaza followed.

322 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

From where Peacock and Updegraff were firing, their
bullets were not striking Bat but were shattering windows
along Front Street. Partisans joined the fray. Al
Updegraff received a slug that passed through his right
lung. The wound did not prove to be fatal. So many
men were shooting that no one could say who had struck
him. With Bat and the enemy out of ammunition, Mayor
Webster marched out to the tracks with a .12-gauge shot
gun in his hands and arrested Bat.

Bat was given an immediate trial. The police-court
docket says that Deputy Marshal Fred Singer made the
complaint, charging that on "the 16th day of April,
1881, in the city of Dodge City, County of Ford, State
of Kansas, W. B. Masterson did then and there, unlaw
fully, feloniously, discharge a pistol upon the streets of
said city."

Bat pleaded guilty and was fined eight dollars and
costs. The story goes that Mayor Webster ordered him
to leave town, presumably in twenty-four hours, and not
to return. It didn't take Bat that long to dissolve the
partnership with Peacock. Jim turned in his badge and
the two brothers took the late-afternoon train to Trini
dad, Colorado, where Bat leased a gambling room.

Dodge had not seen the last of Bat, but the Battle of
the Plaza, which once would have been taken in stride,
caused so much civic indignation that newspapers across
the state snickered in their editorial beards when the
McPherson Independent said with undisguised satis
faction: "Dodge ain't what she used to be."

Any attempt to write off the once-proud Queen of the
Cow Towns as a broken-down old strumpet with nothing
left but a loud belch was a trifle premature.

Luke Short was back in Dodge and he thought well
enough of the town's future to invest everything he had
in buying Chalk Beeson's interest in the Long Branch.

DODGE LOSES ITS EDGE 323

Charley Bassett and Mysterious Dave Mather had soured
on New Mexico and returned to Dodge City. They found
some changes. Ab Webster had been re-elected mayor, and
with him a City Council, all bent on "reform."

On June 10th he made Pete Beamer city marshal, and
named Clark Chipman assistant marshal. Beamer didn't
last long. Webster summoned Jack Bridges, the former
marshal and deputy U.S. marshal, from Colorado and
turned Dodge over to him with orders to bear down and
clean up the town. Chipman was retained in the second
slot.

Why Ab Webster, the long-time owner of the Alamo
saloon, next door to the Long Branch, had suddenly be
come imbued with the determination to clean up Dodge
has never been satisfactorily explained.

A sober young cowboy by the name of Ballard had
been killed without excuse by a South Side mob, of which
a Dodge City policeman was said to have been a member.
There was a lot of public indignation about it. During the
campaign Webster had called it the "foulest of crimes,' 5
and promised if elected that it would be his business to
see that the like of it did not occur again. That could
have been at the bottom of it.

His loyalty to the town can hardly be questioned, yet
he took steps now that, if they had been successful, would
have reduced the Cowboy Capital to the humdrum status
of a country town. Not only was he determined to run
the gamblers out of Dodge, but he got the City Council to
pass an ordinance prohibiting dance-halls or any similar
place, it read, "where lewd men and women gather for
the purpose of dancing/ 9 It also banned the playing of
pianos, violins, or any other musical instruments in the
saloons.

This was the beginning of the celebrated "Dodge City
War" and ending with the equally celebrated "Peace

324 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

Commission. " When it came to a head, contrary to Wyatt
Earp and other commentators, Webster was no longer
mayor. Larry Deger had taken his place, with Webster's
blessing. It was his intention to nse Deger to further his
reform program and strike at his enemies at the same
time- Through Deger he took dead aim on little Luke. The
latter, to attract trade, had installed a beautiful young
piano player in the Long Branch, With the windows and
doors open she could be heard up and down Front Street.
When City Marshal Bridges informed Luke that the music
in his place must stop, the little man did not object. He
felt considerably different about it when he discovered
that evening that the young woman was now playing in
the Alamo.

Not to be bluffed out, Luke countered by engaging a
string trio from a South Side dance-hall. The following
evening, while he was out, two policemen entered the
Long Branch and arrested the musicians. When he
learned what had happened, he set out to get his em
ployees freed on bail, a move the mayor had anticipated,
with the result that the judge of the Police Court could
not be found . . . possibly because Luke had gone looking
for him with a loaded shotgun on his arm.

Tension grew along Front Street as Luke walked back
to the Long Branch, with the music from the Alamo
floating out on the night air. L. C. Hartman, one of the
two officers who had arrested Luke's musicians, lost his
head when he saw him coming and fired a shot at him.
Luke let go with a blast from his shotgun. Neither scored
a hit, but Hartman stumbled and fell off the sidewalk
into the street. Thinking he had killed the officer, Luke
forted up in the Long Branch and sent out word that he
would kill the policeman who tried to arrest him.

In the morning friends persuaded him to give himself
up, plead guilty to disturbing the peace, and close the

DODGE LOSES ITS EDGE 325

incident by paying his fine. But Luke no sooner sur
rendered than he found himself lodged in jail. His friend
Will Harris was permitted to see him. From him Luke
learned that he was going to be deported. Harris agreed
to look after the little man's interests.

At noon the whole police force, heavily armed, es
corted the prisoner to the depot, where the eastbound
and westbound trains that passed each other at Dodge
were discharging, baggage and express. Regretfully Mar
shal Brown, a friend of long standing, told Luke to choose
which train he would take. Luke boarded the train for
Kansas City.

If Ab Webster thought he had his man licked, he was
badly mistaken; little Luke had just begun to fight He
sent an urgent telegram to Bat, then in Denver, asking
him to join him at once. On Bat's advice they went to
Topeka and told their story to Governor Glick* Bat was
never one to do business with the office boy when the
president was available. The governor found himself
under pressure from both sides. Mike Sutton, former
coroner and now county attorney, had wired him that
the local authorities could cope with the situation and
that it wasn't necessary for the state to intervene. Luke
and Bat didn't want any intervention either; they as
sured G-lick that Short could reinstate himself in posses
sion of his property if the state of Kansas would keep
hands off.

The governor, undoubtedly anxious to give Dodge City
a rap on the knuckles for its open defiance of the pro
hibition amendment, told them to go ahead; that there
would be no intervention by him.

Bat and Luke hurried west to Colorado to round up
some reliable "friends." Wyatt Earp was in Silverton.
There was a warrant out on him for the killing of Frank
Stilwell, but Governor PitMn, of Colorado, had refused

326 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

to grant extradition. The upshot of this meeting was that
Earp agreed to leave the security of Colorado and go to
Dodge. With him he took four gun fighters of established
reputation: Johnny Millsap, Jack Vermillion, Dan Tip-
ton, and Johnnie Green. Bat and Luke were on the train
with them, but they went on to Kinsley to remain there
until Earp sent for them.

On the railroad platform in Dodge, Earp was amazed
to find Prairie Dog Dave Morrow wearing a police badge.
He needed nothing more to tell him to what low estate
the Cowboy Capital had fallen.

It didn't take long for word of the arrival of the Earp
party to reach the mayor. He had Sutton wire the gov
ernor for a company of militia, but Grlick was as good as
his promise and refused the request. When Earp de
manded an audience with Mayor Deger and the City
Council, it was granted.

The fight went out of them when he laid his cards
on the table. It was unanimously agreed that if one saloon
could have music, all could. Further, it was agreed that
the anti-gambling and anti-dance-hall ordinances would
not be enforced.

Luke and Bat came in from Kinsley. The little man
had won a clear-cut victory, but he was fearful that as
soon as his friends left town, he would be in trouble
again. This brought into being the now-famous "Dodge
City Peace Commission," with eight men appointed to
choose a new city marshal and police force. With Colonel
Thomas Moonlight, adjutant general of the state, in town
to oversee the proceedings, Bat Masterson, Luke Short,
Wyatt Earp, Will Harris, Charley Bassett, Frank Mc-
Lane, Neal Brown, and Billy Potillon, of the Dodge City
Globe, acting as secretary, the "Commission" went to
work.

The deliberations of this august body of erudite gun

DODGE LOSES ITS EDGE 327

fighters should provide a wonderful second act for the
great American opera of the cowboy frontier, if and
when it is written.

Their greatest achievement was in naming Bill Tilgh-
man assistant marshal of Dodge City, and removing
Clark Chipman from the city payroll. The latter, accord
ing to Luke, was the instigator of all his troubles. The
spotlight of publicity was just as potent then as it is to
day. The men who were caught in its garish light, inside
the law and out, are the ones who are remembered. Tom
Smith of Abilene and Bill Tilghman were two that it
missed.

Tom Smith is still largely unknown and Uncle Billy
was until recently, though they were head and shoulders
above the Wild Bills, the Mastersons, and the Earps. For
fifty years, somewhere on the cowboy frontier, Tilghman
was a peace officer, town marshal, sheriff, and U.S. mar
shal. He had the respect of even the killers and outlaws
whom he hunted so relentlessly. On the night that he was
killed by a drunken prohibition agent in oil-mad Crom
well, Oklahoma, he was seventy-two.

CHAPTER XXIX

LAST OF THE COW TOWNS

I THE SNOW was no sooner off the
n rground in the spring of '84 than Ford
LJ County was scourged by organized
gangs of horse theives. There had always been an un
pleasant amount of such thievery, but nothing to com
pare with this rash of range lawlessness. Sheriff Pat
Sughrue and Deputy Sheriff Mysterious Dave Mather
rode themselves ragged trying to combat it. They secured
convictions against a number of men. Aroused farmers
and ranchers north of Spearville rounded up two thieves
on Saw Log Creek and without waiting for the sheriff,
strung them up. Across the line in Edwards County two
more were left dangling from a wooden bridge. It had
a remarkably salutary effect.

Giving no explanation other than that he was no
longer happy in Dodge, Luke Short closed out his affairs
and left for Fort Worth, Texas, where he was to win last
ing fame for downing Long-haired Jim Courtright,
the former marshal of the town.

Dodge was soon embroiled in the spring elections.
It provided an excellent opportunity for settling some
old scores. When Ab Webster announced that he was a
candidate for the office of mayor, Bat joined the opposi-

328

LAST OF THE COW TOWNS 329

tion and leaped into the campaign with his usual vigor.
To make his voice heard, he became the editor and pub
lisher of a four-page tabloid that he named Vox Populi.
Its life was brief, but while it lasted it was a libelous,
vitriolic little sheet that turned Dodge City politics into
a dogfight.

Heinie Schmidt, whose Ashes of My Campfires and
numerous articles on Dodge City will always be treasured
by historians, told the writer that he couldn't understand
how a man of Bat's limited education could hold down a
position on the editorial staff of a New York newspaper.
He was alluding, of course, to Masterson's position on
the sports desk of the New York Morning Telegraph. A
perusal of his Vox Populi gives the impression that he
was well equipped for his job on the Morning Telegraph.
He had wit, a punishing gift of sarcasm, and the ability
to make his point with a minimum of words, as the
following item culled from one of his editorial columns
indicates :

E. D, Swan would be a nice man to have charge
of the poor widows and orphans of Ford County,
after turning his aged, decrepit father out upon
the streets to die of starvation.

Bat died at his desk in the Morning Telegraph office,
October 27, 1921. He was sixty-eight. He was writing a
scathing column about the upcoming Lew Tendler-Bocky
Kansas fight, which he had been calling a "fix." On the
pad in front of him were his last scrawled words :

I suppose those who hold that because the rich
man gets his ice in the summer and the poor man
gets it in the winter things are breaking even for
both. Maybe so ... but I can't see it that way.

Webster was soundly defeated, but he was soon back
in the public eye. In the meantime the legislature gave

LAST OF THE COW TOWNS 329

tion and leaped into the campaign with his usual vigor.
To make his voice heard, he became the editor and pub
lisher of a four-page tabloid that he named Vox Populi.
Its life was brief, but while it lasted it was a libelous,
vitriolic little sheet that turned Dodge City politics into
a dogfight.

Heinie Schmidt, whose Ashes of My Campfires and
numerous articles on Dodge City will always be treasured
by historians, told the writer that he couldn't understand
how a man of Bat's limited education could hold down a
position on the editorial staff of a New York newspaper.
He was alluding, of course, to Masterson's position on
the sports desk of the New York Morning Telegraph. A
perusal of his Vox Populi gives the impression that he
was well equipped for his job on the Morning Telegraph.
He had wit, a punishing gift of sarcasm, and the ability
to make his point with a minimum of words, as the
following item culled from one of his editorial columns
indicates :

E. D. Swan would be a nice man to have charge
of the poor widows and orphans of Ford County,
after turning his aged, decrepit father out upon
the streets to die of starvation.

Bat died at his desk in the Morning Telegraph office,
October 27, 1921. He was sixty-eight. He was writing a
scathing column about the upcoming Lew Tendler-Eocky
Kansas fight, which he had been calling a "fix." On the
pad in front of him were his last scrawled words :

I suppose those who hold that because the rich
man gets his ice in the summer and the poor man
gets it in the winter things are breaking even for
both. Maybe so ... but I can't see it that way.

Webster was soundly defeated, but he was soon back
in the public eye. In the meantime the legislature gave

330 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

in to the Shorthorn Breeders Association and enacted
into law a sweeping embargo against Texas cattle, barring
them from entering the state from March 1 to December
1. Legislation was passed for its enforcement, and since
Longhorns were not trailed north during the winter
months it sounded the end of the Texas cattle trade.

Dodge refused to believe it. Thousands of Longhorns
were already on the way north. They would be in Kansas
before any machinery could be set up to stop them.
Maybe in another year it might be necessary to find
some way of circumventing the embargo, or it could be
ignored as Dodge was ignoring the prohibition act. The
proud Cowboy Capital tightened its belt and vowed that
it would never surrender the rights and special privileges
that set it apart from the rest of Kansas and made it
superior to the law.

By such means did Dodge deceive itself into believing
that all would still be well. Texas cattlemen were more
realistic. Through their representatives in Congress they
appealed for a National Cattle Trail that would avoid
Kansas and enable them to drive their herds into
Wyoming and the north, free of embargoes and barbed
wire. A bill was introduced, but Colorado stockmen
registered their violent opposition to having Texas cattle
driven through their state and spreading tick fever. It
killed any chance the bill had and it died in committee.

Dodge had once had the spunk to snub a president of
the United States, Eutherf ord B. Hayes, in retaliation for
his refusal to accept its hospitality, and for the twelve to
fifteen minutes that his special car stood at the depot no
one went near it. The town had need of its spunk as the
shipping season of J 84 advanced. Despite blocked trails
and the united opposition of the Kansans, the big herds
got through. On the surface Dodge appeared to be as
prosperous as ever. But one after another the Texans,

330 WILD, WOOLLY A3TD WICKED

in to the Shorthorn Breeders Association and enacted
into law a sweeping embargo against Texas cattle, barring
them from entering the state from March 1 to December
1. Legislation was passed for its enforcement, and since
Longhorns were not trailed north during the winter
months it sounded the end of the Texas cattle trade.

Dodge refused to believe it. Thousands of Longhorns
were already on the way north. They would be in Kansas
before any machinery could be set up to stop them.
Maybe in "another year it might be necessary to find
some way of circumventing the embargo, or it could be
ignored as Dodge was ignoring the prohibition act. The
proud Cowboy Capital tightened its belt and vowed that
it would never surrender the rights and special privileges
that set it apart from the rest of Kansas and made it
superior to the law.

By such means did Dodge deceive itself into believing
that all would still be well. Texas cattlemen were more
realistic. Through their representatives in Congress they
appealed for a National Cattle Trail that would avoid
Kansas and enable them to drive their herds into
Wyoming and the north, free of embargoes and barbed
wire. A bill was introduced, but Colorado stockmen
registered their violent opposition to having Texas cattle
driven through their state and spreading tick fever. It
killed any chance the bill had and it died in committee.

Dodge had once had the spunk to snub a president of
the United States, Rutherford B. Hayes, in retaliation for
his refusal to accept its hospitality, and for the twelve to
fifteen minutes that his special car stood at the depot no
one went near it. The town had need of its spunk as the
shipping season of '84 advanced. Despite blocked trails
and the united opposition of the Kansans, the big herds
got through. On the surface Dodge appeared to be as
prosperous as ever. But one after another the Texans,

LAST OF THE COW TOWNS 331

men like King, Mabry, Childress, said the difficulties
they had encountered were too many and too costly, that
they would not be back. Nor were they interested in the
schemes proposed by the railroad and the leading men
of Dodge for getting around the embargo. It gave the
free-spending, the nightly hilarity, and the brave talk a
hollow sound.

Ab Webster stepped forward with an idea that would
put the Cowboy Capital back on the front page of news
papers the country over and pour a golden flood into
the town. To celebrate the Fourth of July, Dodge would
stage a bullfight, the first ever held on American soil.
Beneath its bravado the town was so desperate that in
two days ten thousand dollars was raised to finance the
affair. The Dodge City Driving Park and Fair Associ
ation was organized and a circular plank-enclosed arena
was constructed in front of the grandstand. A man was
dispatched to Mexico apparently he got no further than
Ju&rez, across the Eio Grande from El Paso to hire
the necessary matadors and picadors. Doc Barton, a
Dodge old-timer and pioneer cattleman, was engaged to
find the bulls.

Of course the matadors were advertised as the most
famous in Mexico and the bulls as the wildest that could
be found on the plains. The five Mexicans who were
brought to Dodge were only part-time bullfighters.

To make sure that neither men nor horses would be
gored, Webster and his fellow promotors had the tips of
the horns sawed off and the ends smoothed with a rasp.

As for publicity, Dodge got it in abundance. News
papers the country over joined in a chorus of protests.
Webster was deluged with telegrams and letters beseech
ing him to stop the fight. Many threatened legal action
unless he did. Humane societies and the American Soci
ety for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals filed formal

332 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

protests, citing the laws of Kansas that expressly for
bade the maiming and torture of any horse, ox or other
cattle* It has been claimed that the ex-mayor received a
telegram from the U.S. Attorney General's office warn
ing him that bullfighting was against the law in the United
States.

It is supposed to have brought forth from "Webster his
classic telegram. "Hell, Dodge City ain't in the United
States/'

Kansas City and the Topeka newspapers asserted that
Governor Glick would stop the fight. The governor finally
got around to doing something about it, but by then the
"glorious 7 ' celebration was over.

The corrida was something of a bust. Only one of the
five bulls turned into the arena showed any fight. To give
the customers their money's worth, the performance was
repeated on the Fifth with somewhat more excitement.

The affair had brought hundreds of people to Dodge,
among them correspondents from Eastern newspapers.
Some say five hundred cowboys, attired in their finest
regalia, were present. Far more remarkable than their
number is the fact that none of them came armed. Not
a shot was fired during the two-day celebration. Dodge
was no longer Dodge. Those ex-Boot Killers, now
residing in Prairie Grove Cemetery, must have writhed
in their graves.

But the bullfight brought a lot of hard money to town.
The gamblers reaped a harvest and packed the saloons.
As for the ladies of the evening, one writer made this
pithy comment: "It was only a short walk from the Long
Branch to Peacock's dance-hall, and every step was
paved with evil intentions." *

Dodge got a tremendous lift when Asa T. Soule, the
"Hops Bitters King," of Eochester, New York, came to
town. He had money and he knew how to spend it. He gave

OF THE COW TOWN'S 333

Dodge City Soule College, the first institution of higher
learning in southwest Kansas. He listened to the dream of
the Gilbert brothers, John and George, of nearby Cimar
ron, who had it all figured out how they could divert
water from the Arkansas River into a ninety-mile canal
and irrigate 640,000 acres of prairie land and make them
"bloom like the rose," as the Kansas Cowboy put it.

Soule liked the idea so well he poured as much as two
million dollars into the Eureka Irrigation Company. The
Gilbert brothers found it easier to pump money into the
long ditch than water.

Soule built a town at the intake from the river, the
site of the old Cimarron Crossing of the Santa Fe Trail,
and called it Ingalls, after John J. Ingalls, political leader
and writer of the day. He meant for the new town to be
the county seat of Gray County. To secure the votes of
Montezuma Township, he built them a town and a thirty-
five mile railroad, the Dodge City, Montezuma and Trini
dad, which was to connect with the proposed Arkansas,
Kansas and Colorado that, eventually, was to be the Eock
Island's main line to the Southwest. Soon after the elec
tion was won, Soule 's contractors began tearing up the
tracks. Seeing how they had been duped, the farmers and
ranchers helped themselves to whatever railroad property
they could carry away.

Cimarron was the temporary county seat and though
a court ruling ordered it to surrender the county rec
ords to Ingalls, it refused to do so. Three hundred strong,
Ingalls moved into Cimarron and in a bloody battle took
the records by force.

Digging the canal wasn't any two-bit pick-and-shovel
job; Soule brought in modern steam shovels and other
heavy equipment. In late summer the Kansas Cowboy
reported: " There are now employed 225 men, 360 horses
and mules. The monthly payroll will be $15,000. "

334 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

The course of the gouged-out canal is visible today.
George Bowles, who took part in the county-seat fight,
says the big ditch never held a drop of water. 2 He is
mistaken ; the big ditch carried water for miles, but keep
ing it there proved to be so expensive that the project
was abandoned. Soule sold out at a terrific loss. A new
group of speculators had a second try at it and failed.
In 1912, Denver capitalists tried to revive the project.
Water came through the big ditch once more, but by then
the numerous irrigation projects in Colorado had so re
duced the river level that it could no longer function. In
1895 it was sold to Julius Morgan, of New York, for
$10,000.

Turn the calendar back to Friday night July 18,
1884, in Dodge. The scene is the Opera House saloon, run
by Nels Gary. On the floor above, a dance-hall operated
by Deputy Sheriff Mysterious Dave Mather and a man
named Black, had recently been closed by the police.
Mather and Black had turned the place into a variety
theater. For several weeks the former had been saying
that the Opera House dance-hall had been put out of
business because of a personal grudge Assistant Marshal
Tom Nixon bore him. That was the situation when Nixon
walked up the stairs and looked in on the performance
this night.

Tom Nixon and Dave Mather were well-known men in
Dodge. Each had a host of friends. Nixon, the old buffalo
hunter, had been there from the beginning. For years
his blacksmith shop had been the most popular place of
its kind in town. He had put in time as a deputy sheriff
and been a member of the police force on several oc
casions.

Dave Mather also had a good record in Dodge. He had
been on the police and was now for the second time
deputy sheriff of Ford County. Because he went his way

LAST OF THE COW TOWNS 335

quietly and was not a talkative man, the nickname of
Mysterious Dave had been fastened on him.

That he was a lineal descendant of Cotton Mather,
as some have claimed, is open to question. Bob Wright,
who knew him well, calls him "the most dangerous man
in Dodge City/' 8

On the night in question he was watching the per
formance when he glanced back and saw Nixon at the
door. He invited the assistant marshal to come in. The
latter declined and turned back down the stairs. Mather
followed and hurled violent abuse at him. Nixon whipped
around suddenly and fired a shot at Mather.

The slug chipped a splinter out of the wooden wall
and imbedded itself in Mysterious Dave's right hand,
inflicting a slight wound* Nixon went on out and sur
rendered himself to the city marshal. He was freed on
bail and brought to trial the following Monday morning.
No one appeared against him and the case was dismissed.
He was on duty that night, and as he passed the Opera
House saloon about ten o'clock, Mather stepped out and
called, "Tom!" When Nixon turned, Mather killed him.

It was brought out at the trial that three or four shots
were fired, Nixon fell at the first one. Mather came closer
and fired at least twice more. One of the bullets struck a
bystander, but not inflicting a serious wound.

Pat Sughrue, "Old Blue" several years back a gun
had been discharged so close to his face that his cheek
still bore the powder marks and Mather had been
together a long time. It was now his unpleasant duty to
arrest him.

Dave offered no resistance. He was charged with
murder. After a preliminary hearing his attorney got a
writ of habeas corpus, admitting Mather to bail, with
bond fixed at six thousand dollars, which was signed by
Larry Deger and others. A change of venue was asked

336 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

and granted and the trial was transferred to Kinsley, in
adjoining Edwards County.

A number of witnesses four of them eyewitnesses
testified. Bat Masterson was one. Two swore tinder oath
that they had heard Mather say before he fired, "I'll
kill you." Bat testified that he was the first man to reach
Nixon and that Nixon's gun was still in the scabbard.

The evidence was all against Mysterious Dave, but
the jury ignored the evidence and found him not guilty.
It is doubtful if a greater miscarriage of justice has ever
been recorded.

There was a stillness in Dodge after the shipping sea
son ended and the last of the Texans had disappeared
down the trails. But not for long; the town still had too
much bounce left to despair about the future.

By now there were thousands of Shorthorns on the
plains and prairies of western Kansas. If Dodge never
saw another Longhorn, it could continue to be a lively
cattle market and shipping point. Then, too, there was the
heretofore undesired and ignored wheat farmer. Regret
fully Dodge conceded that he might be of some value.
There were a lot of them. They had nearly a hundred
thousand acres under cultivation.

With or without the trail herds Dodge would continue
to be the great trading center for the Southwest. Most
of the irrigation company's big payroll was being spent
in town. Dodge was growing; anyone who needed a job
could find one. Everything considered, there didn't seem
to be much to worry about.

But the hard blows were still to come. There were some
anxious moments in March of '85 when the Topeka papers
carrying the official proclamation of the new prohibitory
law against selling and possessing alcoholic beverages
reached Dodge. It looked like the state of Kansas meant
business this time. Several leading saloons resorted to

LAST OE THE COW TOWN'S 337

the subterfuge of advertising that only temperance
drinks were for sale. For " temperance drinks" they were
remarkably potent.

Albert Griffin, a leading temperance lecturer, came to
town, and after looking things over announced that he
would be back with a state official to remain until every
saloon in Dodge was put out of business. He was as good
as his word about returning. With him he brought
Colonel A. R. Jetmore, representing the attorney gen
eral of the state of Kansas.

A jeering crowd of several hundred was at the depot
to meet them. No violence was offered, but tension ran
high. During the afternoon the police were kept busy
arresting belligerent wets and drys who engaged in
knockdown fights up and down Front Street. The excite
ment mounted to such a pitch that Griffin called off the
public meeting announced for that evening. In the morning
he and Jetmore returned to Topeka.

Bat Masterson regarded the invasion of the drys as
the work of his political opponents (meaning Larry Deger
and George Hoover), and somehow aimed at him. He
wrote articles for all three newspapers. They were so
violent and abusive that the Globe refused to print them
until he toned them down. The Kansas Cowboy, which
would print anything, published as was*

They whipped up such a storm that Attorney General
S. B. Bradford came himself to study the situation. It
was his learned opinion that Dodge had an individuality
of its own entirely different in character from any other
locality in the state, that the rules of. government in
towns like Manhattan and Ottawa are not applicable to
Dodge City. "The town will work out its own salvation,"
he declared. "It cannot be redeemed and purified by
means of the lash in the hands of outside parties. " 4

He went back to Topeka and the saloons stayed open.

338 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

The proprietors were regularly arrested and fined, which
did not amount to more than the license fee they had
formerly paid.

And now the perfect paradox. Bat had gone to Denver,
where he joined the temperance forces. In March 1886
he returned to Dodge with a group of enforcement
officers and closed the saloons in which he had drunk,
gambled, and sowed some very wild oats.

But Dodge City was not to be dried up so easily.
Blind pigs began to operate. They became so numerous
that even a stranger could find one. The quality of the
whiskey dispensed suifered, but for the next twenty
years if you wanted a drink in Dodge you didn't have to
peer through a peephole or need a password to get it.

In October the Globe reported that one hundred eighty-
six carloads of hogs had been shipped that year. It called
the figure impressive, which it was, and pointed out how
important a factor hog-raising had become in the live
stock business of Ford County. Hogs had been shipped
from Dodge for years, but this was the first time it had
received more than a line or two in the news columns.
There were other items that indicated how the Cowboy
Capital was changing. G-eorge Hoover, now president of
the Dodge City Bank, in addition to Ms cigar and liquor
business, had completed plans for building a flour mill.
"Every day wagonloads of wheat are being hauled to
the new grain elevator east of the stockyards." The Globe
burned its bridges behind it by saying: "We believe the
day will come when Dodge City will rank among the great
wheat-producing centers of the State."

Dodge needed all the encouragement it could find, for
'85 had been a disappointing year. It was looking hope
fully to '86 when the first of a series of calamities struck.

For the fifteen years since the coming of the railroad
it had escaped the ravages of a major fire, the great

LAST OF THE COW TOWNS 339

enemy of all frontier towns, until mid-January of that
year. On a bitter cold Sunday afternoon fire broke out in
a grocery store on the north side of Front Street. The
flames spread quickly and every building in the block west
of Bridge Street, eleven in all, burned to the ground.

The Fire Company was the leading social organization
of the town, to which all the prominent men belonged.
Its drill team won prizes for laying hose and making fast
exhibition runs at conventions, but as fire fighters the
company was no better that its limited equipment, which
consisted of a hose cart and hand pumper.

Actually the company's chief value when a fire broke
out was to remove human beings and goods from the en
dangered buildings. Purchasing more apparatus would
not have given Dodge more protection, for it had no
running water. As for the whiskey barrels filled with water
along Front Street they could serve no purpose once a
fire had made some headway.

That was the situation on the still, cold night of No
vember 29 when the fire bell rang. This time the blaze
was in an upstairs room of a small frame building next
door to the Opera House saloon. The flames soon burst
through the roof and it quickly became evident that unless
the brick building of Eobert W. Wright and Company
checked the conflagration that everything in the block east
of Bridge Street, the heart of the town's business dis
trict, would go.

Though there was no wind, the roaring fire sent show
ers of sparks into the night air. While an army of men
struggled valiantly to carry goods and fixtures out into
the plaza, the roof of Wright's building caught fire. The
flames then raced on until they had laid waste to the rest

of the block.

Before the fire burned itself out, Bob Wright ordered
a contractor to start work at once for a new building

340 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

for him on Bridge Street. Other merchants and saloon-
men, voiced a similar determination to carry on.

Less than two weeks later a third fire in the block east
of the depot destroyed property and merchandise to the
value of fifty thousand dollars. Some said the fiends of
hell were conspiring to reduce Dodge to ashes. The
Eeverend W. G. Elliott voiced another view. He said:
"God is venting His wrath on Dodge City for its mani
fold iniquities."

Worse was yet to come.

Though Dodge was staggering from the blows it had
received, it did not let the coming of the new year arrive
unnoticed. On New Year's Day a few hardy celebrants
were abroad, making merry. In the late afternoon, when
ominous-looking black clouds appeared in the north and
the temperature began to drop, they thought nothing of
it. An hour later day turned into night and a howling
blizzard struck the town.

The storm raged all night and buried Dodge under
twenty-four inches of snow. As soon as the sun struck
it, it crusted hard enough to bear the weight of a man.
Before Dodge finished digging out of the frozen drifts,
the sky darkened again. A forty-mile-an-hour wind
screamed down from the north, bringing more snow.
The temperature dropped to eighteen below.

There were no trains, no mail. Out on the range un
protected livestock perished by the thousands. Hogs
smothered in their pens and the frozen carcasses of
cattle and sheep piled up in fence corners. A few men lost
their lives.

Dodge was inured to blizzards and freezing cold, but
it had never experienced anything to compare with this.
For three weeks the mercury stayed at the bottom of the
glass, more snow fell, and the Arkansas Eiver was frozen
over to a depth of twelve inches.

IAST OF THE COW TOWN'S 341

It wasn't any series of local storms confined to south
western Kansas; this was the big "die-up" of '86, the
worst in range history, extending all the way from the
Canadian border deep into Texas, and which led Gran-
ville Stuart, the dean of Montana stockmen, to say when
he saw his starving steers coming to the house, looking
for food and shelter, and freezing to death in their tracks
and he unable to help them, that never again would he
own livestock that he could not protect.

Stuart says that half a minion head perished in
Montana alone, and he was never given to exaggeration.
He lost 90 per cent of his thirty-five thousand herd him
self. Many Montana outfits were wiped out completely.
It was the same in Nebraska and Kansas. It is a con
servative estimate that, including horses, mules, hogs,
and sheep, a million and a half animals died from cold
and starvation.

When spring arrived and the grass came green again,
groups of men went out from Dodge to strip the hides
off the dead carcasses that littered the prairies. They
were the pallbearers of an era that was gone. The few
cattlemen who had saved enough to be able to make a
fresh start had no heart for it ; what had happened in '86
could happen again.

As a cow town, Dodge was finished.

Back in Abilene, in 1869, when T. C. Henry had
preached that wheat and the other hard grains, not Texas
cattle, would someday make Kansas rich and prosperous,
few had believed him. But it had come to pass.

He was a promoter and a speculator. Of those who
hailed him a true prophet, some ended up impoverished ;
others prospered. His famous "Golden Belt" four miles
of unf enced wheat, extending from Detroit to Abilene on
both sides of Kansas Pacific tracks had focused at
tention on Kansas wheat farming. Ecstatically a re-

342 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

porter for the New York Herald had written: "Riding in
a silver palace car one of the most impressive sights
that meets the eye of the traveller through this State
is this mammoth field of solid miles of grain, shining in
the sunlight, ripening for the harvest, bending to the
breeze and waving to and fro like a sea of molten gold."

This puff was undoubtedly arranged by Henry, but
whether it was or not, it was what Kansas needed at
the time. He was the first to brand the Texas cattle trade
a temporary business that when it disappeared all the
state would have left to show for it would be the trails
the thousands of Longhorns had cut deep into the
prairies and the worthless stockyards whitening in the
sun.

The Texas cattle trade was gone. So were the old
stockyards, the lumber carted away to be used for other
purposes. Millions, of dollars had changed hands. Very
little of the money had remained in Kansas. Its farmers
had survived the Texans, drouths, tornadoes, plagues of
grasshoppers and chinch bugs, and their tenacity and
Little May and Turkey Bed wheat were bringing nearer
the day when Kansas would be recognized as one of the
great grain-producing states of the Union.

NOTES

CHAPTER 1

1. Ponting, Jr., Thomas Candy: Life of Tom Candy Ponting, Evans-
ton, Illinois, 1952.

2. Stewart H. Holbrook, The Age of the Moguls, New York, 1953.

3. Garnet and Brayer, American Cattle Trails, New York, 1952.

4. Minnie Dubbs Milbank, the N. Y. Westerners' Brand Book, Vol. V,
No. 2, 1958.

5. Slason Thompson, Short History of American Railways, New York,
1925.

6. Joseph G. McCoy, Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade, Kansas
City, 1874.

CHAPTER 2

1. Joseph G. McCoy, Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade, Kansas
City, 1874.

2. Ibid.

3. Stuart Henry, Conquering Our Great American Plains, New York,
1930.

4. Ibid.

5. Joseph G. McCoy, Ibid.

6. Wayne Gard, The Great Buffalo Hunt, New York, 1959.

7. E. C. ("Teddy Blue") Abbott, and H. H. Smith, We Pointed Them
North, New York, 1939.

CHAPTER 3

1. Joseph G. McCoy, Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade, Kansas
City, 1874.

343

344 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

2. Ibid.

3. Floyd Benjamin Streeter, Prairie Trails and Cow Towns, Boston,

1936.

CHAPTER 4

1. Stuart Henry, Conquering Our Great American Plains, see Appen
dix, New York, 1930.

2. A. T. Andreas, History of Kansas, Wichita, 1883.

3. A. T. Andreas, Ibid.

4. Wayne Gard, The Chisholm Trail, Norman, Oklahoma, 1954.

5. Wayne Gard, Ibid.

6. T. TL Taylor, The Chisholm Trail and Other Routes, San Antonio,
1936.

7. T. U. Taylor, Jesse Chisholm, Bandrea, Texas, 1939.

8. "Correcting the Records," N. Y. Westerners' Brand Book, Vol. V,
No. 4, 1959.

CHAPTER 5

1. Stuart Henry, Conquering Our Great American Plains, New York,
1930.

2. Leavenworth Daily Conservative from N. Y. Tribune.

3. Joseph G. McCoy, Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade, Kansas
City, 1874.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

CHAPTER 6

1. Joseph G. McCoy, Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade, Kansas
City, 1874.

2. Forbes Parkhill, The Wildest of the West, Denver, Colorado, 1957.

3. E. C. ("Teddy Blue") Abbott, and H. H. Smith, We Pointed Them
North, New York, 1939.

CHAPTER 7

1. T. C. Henry in Kansas State Historical Collections, Vol. IX.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

NOTES 345

CHAPTER 8

1. James C. Malin, Kansas Historical Society Quarterly, Vol. X, No.
3, Vol. XI, No. 4, Vol. XII, No. 1, Vol. XII, No. 2, Vol. XII, No. 4.

2. Ibid. Vol. X, No. 3.

3. Ibid. Vol. X, No. 3.

4. J. B. Edwards in the Abilene Chronicle, 1870.

5. W. D, Stambaugh, Kansas State Historical Collections, Vol. IX.

6. Stuart Henry, Conquering Our Great American Plains, New York,
1930.

CHAPTER 9

1. Eugene Cunningham, Triggemometry, New York, 1934.

2. Ibid.

3. Abilene Chronicle, Sept. 14, 1871.

4. Stuart Henry, Conquering Our Great American Plains, New York,
1930.

CHAPTER 10

1. "John Wesley Hardin," Frontier Times, 1894. Bandera, Texas.

2. Ibid.

3. Eugene Cunningham, Triggernometry, New York, 1934,

4. Joseph G. McCoy, Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade, Kansas
City, 1874.

CHAPTER 11

1. Joseph G. McCoy, Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade, Kansas
City, 1874.

2. T. C. Henry, Kansas State Historical Collections.

3. Joseph G. McCoy, Ibid.

4. George T ->linek, Ellsworth 1867-1947, Salina, Kansas, 1947.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Floyd B. Streeter, Prairie Trails and Cow Towns, Boston, 1936.

CHAPTER 12

1. Stuart Lake, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, Boston, 1931.

2. Nyle Miller, Some Widely Publicized Police Officers, Lincoln,
Nebraska, 1958.

346 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

3. Eugene Cunningham, Triggernometry, New York, 1934.

4. W. M. Walton, Life and Adventures of Ben Thompson, Bandera,
Texas, 1884.

CHAPTER 13

1. Floyd B. Streeter, Prairie Trails and Cow Towns, Boston, 1936.

2. Ibid.

3. Eugene Cunningham, Triggernometry, New York, 1934.

4. Floyd B. Streeter, Ibid.

5. George Jelinek, Ellsworth 1867-1947, Salina, Kansas, 1947.

6. Ibid.

CHAPTER 14

1. Stuart Lake, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, Boston, 1931.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Eugene Cunningham, Triggernometry, New York, 1934.

5. William McLeod Raine, Riders' West, New York, 1956.

6. Ibid.

1. Robert M. Wright, Dodge City: The Cowboy Capital and the Great

Southwest, Wichita, 1913.
8. Fred E. Sutton, Hands Up, Indianapolis, 1927.

CHAPTER 15

1. Kansas, A Guide to the Sunflower State, New York, 1939.

2. A. T. Andreas, History of Kansas, Wichita, 1883.

3. R. W. Muse, A History of Harvey County, Wichita, 1893.

4. George D. Wolfe, N. Y. Westerners' Brand Book, Vol. IV, No. 1,
New York, 1957.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Floyd B. Streeter, Prairie Trails and Cow Towns, Boston, 1936.

CHAPTER 16

1. Chester C. Heizer in the Caldwell Messenger, Border Queen Edi
tion, 1956.

2. Fred E. Sutton, Hands Up, Indianapolis, 1927.

3. Kansas, A Guide to the Sunflower State, New York, 1939.

STOTES 347

CHAPTER 17

1. Joseph G. McCoy, Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade, Kansas
City, 1874.

2. Ibid.

CHAPTER 18

1. Floyd B. Streeter, Prairie Trails and Cow Towns, Boston, 1936.

2. Joseph G. McCoy, Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade, Kansas
City, 1874.

3. Foster-Harris, The Look of the Old West, New York, 1855.

CHAPTER 19

1. Stuart Lake, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, Boston, 1931.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Floyd B. Streeter, Prairie Trails and Cow Towns, Boston, 1936.

5. Stuart Henry, Conquering Our Great American Plains, New York,
1930.

CHAPTER 20

1. Eugene Cunningham, Triggernometry, New York, 1934.

2. V. V. Masterson, The Katy Railroad and the Last Frontier, Nor
man, Oklahoma, 1952.

3. Stuart Lake, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, Boston, 1931.

4. William McLeod Raine, Riders West, New York, 1956.

CHAPTER 21

1. George D. Freeman, Midnight and Noonday, Caldwell, Kansas, 1890.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Caldwell News, December 21, 1887.

5. V. V. Masterson, The Katy Railroad and the Last Frontier, Nor
man, Oklahoma, 1952.

6. Sumner County Press, July 30, 1874.

7. Arkansas City Traveler, August 22, 1874.

CHAPTER 22

1. V. V. Masterson, The Katy Railroad and the Last Frontier, Nor
man, Oklahoma, 1952.

348 WILD, WOOLLY AND WICKED

2. Grant Foreman, A History of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, 1936.

3. V. V. Master son, Ibid.

4. Grant Foreman, Ibid.

5. George D. Freeman, Midnight and Noonday, Caldwell, Kansas, 1890.

6. Ramon F. Adams, in introduction to A Sketch of Sam Bass, the
Bandit, by Charles L. Martin, Norman, Oklahoma, 1956,

7. Eugene Cunningham, Triggernometry, New York, 1934.

CHAPTER 23

1* George D. Freeman, Midnight and Noonday, Caldwell, Kansas, 1890.

2. Ibid.

3. Caldwell Messenger, Caldwell, Kansas.

4. Ibid.

CHAPTER 2

1. Caldwell Messenger, Caldwell, Kansas.

2. Glenn Shirley, Pawnee Bill, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1958.

3. Weekly News, Caldwell, Kansas.

4. Kansas, A Guide to the Sunflower State, New York, 1939.

5. Caldwell Messenger, Caldwell, Kansas.

CHAPTER 25

1. Stanley Vestal, Dodge City: Queen of Cow Towns, New York,
1952.

2. Stuart Lake, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, Boston, 1931.

3. Ibid.

4. Robert M. Wright, Dodge City: The Cowboy Capital and the Great
Southwest, Wichita, 1913.

5. Ibid.

6. Richard Irving Dodge, The Hunting Grounds of the Great West,
London, 1877.

CHAPTER U6

1. Fred E. Sutton, Hands Up, Indianapolis, 1927.

CHAPTER 27

1. Stuart Lake, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, Boston, 1931,

2. Ibid.

NOTES 349

3. Eddie Foy and Alvin F. Harlow, Clowning through Life, New
York, 1928.

4. Stanley Vestal, Dodge City: Queen of the Cow Towns t New York,
1952.

5. George G. Thompson, Bat Masterson: The Dodge City Years,
Topeka, 1943.

6. Dane Coolidge, Fighting Men of the West, New York, 1932.

CHAPTER 29

1. Frank S. Barde Collection, Archives Oklahoma State Historical
Society.

2. James D. Horan, Across the Cimarron, New York, 1956.

3. Robert M. Wright, Dodge City: The Cowboy Capital and the Great
Southwest, Wichita, 1913.

4. Dodge City Globe.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abbott, E. C. ("Teddy Bine") and Smith Helena Hnnt-

ington: We Pointed Them North
Adams, Ramon F. : Introduction to A Sketch of Sam

Bass, the Bandit, by Charles L. Martin
Andreas, A. T. : History of Kansas
Bronson, E. P. : Reminiscenc.es of a Ranchman
Cody, William Frederick : The Adventures of Buffalo Bill
Cook, James H. : Fifty Years on the Old Frontier
Coolidge, Dane: Fighting Men of the West
Crawford, Samuel J.: Kansas in the Sixties
Croy, Homer C. : Jesse James Was My Neighbor
Cunningham, Eugene: Triggernometry
Debo, Angie: The Cowman's Southwest
Dodge, Richard Irving: The Plains of the Great West
Dodge, Richard Irving: The Hunting Grounds of the

Great West

Edwards, J. B. : Early Days in Abilene
Foreman, Grant: A History of Oklahoma
Foreman, Grant: Down the Texas Road
Foster-Harris : The Look of the Old West
Freeman, George D. : Midnight and Noonday, Or Dark

Deeds Unraveled
Foy, Eddie, and Harlow, Alvin F.: Clowning through

Life

Gard, "Wayne : The Chisholm Trail
Gard, Wayne : The Great Buffalo Hunt

351

352 WILD, WOOLLY AIST) WICKED

Garnet, M., and Brayer, Herbert 0.: American Cattle

Trails

Hardin, John Wesley: John Wesley Hardin
Henry, Stuart : Conquering Our Great American Plains
Holbrook, Stewart H. : The Age of the Moguls
Horan, James D. : Across the Cimarron
James, Marquis : The Cherokee Strip
Jelinek, George : Ellsworth 1867-1947
Kansas State Guide : Guide to the Sunflower State
Lake, Stuart: Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal
Malin, James C. : Kansas State Historical Sosiety Quar
terly, Vol. X, No. 3, Vol. XI, No. 4, Vol. XII, No. 1,
Vol. XII, No. 2, Vol. XII, No. 4.

Masterson, V. V. : The Katy Railroad and the Last Frontier
McCoy, Joseph G. : Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade
McNeal, T. A. : When Kansas Was Young
McNeal, T. A. : When Newton Was the Wickedest Town
McNeal, T. A. : When Hell Whs in Session at Caldwell
Miller, Nyle: Some Widely Publicised Western Police

Officers

Milbank, Minnie Dubbs : The Three-Mountain Trail
Muse, K W. : A History of Harvey County
Myers, John Myers : Doc Holliday
O'Connor, Eichard: Wild Bill HickoTc
O'Connor, Bichard: Bat Masterson
ParMll, Forbes : Wildest of the West
Pelzer, Louis: The Shifting Cow Towns of Kansas
Ponting, Jr., Thomas Candy: Thomas Candy Ponting, a

Biography

Raine, William McLeod : Eiders West
Sandoz, Mari : The Cattlemen
Schmidt, Heinie : Ashes of My Camp fires
Shirley, Glenn : Pawnee Bill
Stuart, Granville: Forty Years on the Frontier
Streeter, Floyd B. : Prairie Trails and Cow Towns
Streeter, Floyd B. : Ben Thompson, Man with, a Gun
Sutton, Fred^E. (with A. B. MacDonald) : Hands Up

BIBLIOGRAPHY 353

Taylor, T. IL : The Chisholm Trail and Other Routes

Taylor, T. IL : Jesse Chisholm

Thompson, George C. : Bat Master son: The Dodge City

Years

Thompson, Slason : Short History of American Railways
Tibles, Thomas Henry: Buckskin and Blanket Days
Tilghman, Zoe A. : Marshal of the Last Frontier
Vestal, Stanley: Dodge City: Queen of Cow Towns
"Walton, W. M. : Life and Adventures of Ben Thompson
Wilstach, Paul : Prince of Pistoleers
Wright, Robert M. : Dodge City: The Cowboy Capital and

the Great Southwest
Newspapers and other Periodicals
The Caldwell Messenger, Caldwell, Kansas. (Many of the

old newspaper quotes on Caldwell were gathered from

the Border Queen edition of the Messenger. Others can

be found on microfilm in the New York Public Library,

in the Oklahoma State Historical Society, and in the

Kansas State Historical Society archives.)
Old Newspapers quoted :

Abilene Chronicle

Wichita Eagle

Wichita Beacon

Ellsworth Reporter

Dodge City Globe

Dodge City Times

Dodge City, Ford County Globe

Kansas Cowboy

Topeka Commonwealth

Sumner County Press

Wellington News

Caldwell News

Caldwell Weekly News

McPherson Independent

New York Westerners' Brand Book for 1958 and 1959
Kansas State Historical Society Quarterly for 1941-43

and 1951

354 WILD, WOOLLY AETD WICKED

Oklahoma State Historical Society's Chronicles of

homa, a quarterly
Stambaugh, W. D. : Letters in Archives of Kansas btate

Historical Society

Henry, T. C. : Letters in Archives of Kansas State His
torical Society

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